


Beyond the Blue Horizon

by TheLittleLady



Series: Squeaks (AU) [2]
Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Blue Matter, F/M, Gen, Headcanon, OC robot, Portals, Yeeep it's a fanbot story, green matter, malfunctions, space dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 28
Words: 87,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLittleLady/pseuds/TheLittleLady
Summary: A new robot wakes up at Walter Manor, giving an inside view to the antics of the residents. This is all complicated by the fact that she remembers being human, and starts poking around into things that are none of her business.Intermingled with some headcannon theories on blue matter, green matter, and a somewhat different version of The Spine than you might think.





	1. Who needs sleep anyway?

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to part 2! To summarise part 1, Peter VI made a robot for virtual reality purposes, installed a blue matter core and maybe shouldn't have been surprised when the robot became sentient. 
> 
> In Walter Manor, later that day...

The room was dark and quiet. The window was closed, and the curtains drawn to avoid the breeze and the moonlight. A CD player in the corner was silent, but prepped with music, in case it helped. On the floor here and there were pillows of varying softness, and even blankets. A couple of the pillows had small black smears of oil.

A little robot stood in another corner, black eyelids closed, her arms crossed and her head leaned against the wall. She’d tried putting a pillow against the wall, but it hadn’t made much difference.

She still couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t tired, it was just that she had no idea _how_ to be. When she was human, if she was tired then she’d... well, she didn’t really know, because she’d always shut down at that point.

It didn’t help that Squeaks was still fairly distressed. A few short hours ago, she had been told that she wasn’t who she thought she was. That she was now, in fact, divorced from her original body and confined to that of a robot. The memories in her head weren’t hers.

She picked up another pillow from the floor and used it to wipe away the newest oily tears from her photoreceptors. She was so confused. Everything she did renewed the fear of not knowing who she now was. She never cried oil, before. And she couldn’t wipe her tears with her own fingers; her hand had corners which scratched her eyes.

She had so many questions, and Peter promised he could answer them. But she’d have to shut down so he could find out himself and fix what he could. Something felt very strange, besides being a robot, and she hadn’t yet been able to place it. Something was... hollow.

“Alright,” she’d said, “how do I do that?”

“Oh. I don’t know. The others just do it themselves. I could disconnect your core and install a power button?”

“No! Please don’t. A minute was awful enough, never mind hours.”

Peter had, only minutes ago, disconnected her blue matter core to check if that was causing her to be conscious. It had; she'd been thrown into heavy, suffocating, silent blackness. She hadn't been able to move, or see, or speak. He told her it had been for only a few seconds, but it had felt so much longer.

He’d fetched the nearest automaton, which happened to be The Spine, to offer guidance. Peter’d had to explain how Squeaks was even there in the first place. Spine had just stared Peter down with stormy eyes. He refused to even look at Squeaks. As Peter started explaining the blue matter core, The Spine started to angrily vent steam.

Given her state of distress, Squeaks found herself hurt that he hadn’t been happy to see her. He seemed outright furious. Greasy oil began to fill her eyes.

“Explain later, Peter,” she’d cut in, “Spine, how do I sleep? How do robots power down?”

“I don’t know,” he replied gruffly, “we just do. We need to power down, so we power down.”

“Gee, thanks.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She tried to frown at him, but the metal panel making up her forehead didn’t flex.

“Well what did you think I’d say? Curl up with a good book and a glass of warm milk? Hold your breath and drink upside down? We’re robots!”

“That’s hiccups,” she snapped, and then stopped short.

_Hold your breath._

That’s what was wrong.

“I can’t breathe”, she’d said, eyes widening.

The Spine raised his head, eyes peering at her, “well, no. You don’t.”

“But I need to...” she felt panic start to close in. She wanted to gulp for breath, to inhale deeply to relieve the growing fear, but she couldn’t. Nothing happened. Sensors somewhere started beeping. She began rattling uncontrollably, and little sparks crackled in front of her eyes.

“You _don’t_ need to,” said The Spine, with growing concern, “That’s kind of the point.”

“Spine, I think she’s shorting,” Peter stepped closer as her rattling became more violent, Squeaks desperately trying to take a breath as her vision closed in.

“Squeaks, it’s OK. You don’t have to breathe.”

She tried to answer, but her mind was going blank.

“She’s going to break something, Spine!”

“What’s wrong with her? Why does she think she needs air?”

“I think she has memories of Rachel.”

“She _remembers_ being human?”

“Not really, but yes, OK. What do we do?”

Their words bounced about her head as she felt fire in her mind. Elsewhere, she heard something shatter.

“My computer!”

“Why the hell is that going off?!”

“She has a memory storage there. She must be uploading this attack!”

The Spine growled, grabbed Squeaks by the shoulders and pushed her into Peter’s arms. He put his hands either side of her head, turned it, and pressed it against Peter, her rubber ear to his chest.

“ _Breathe_ , Peter. Preferably loudly.”

“Wh-“

“Just breathe.”

The sound was enough for her. She felt the fire in her head subside as she listened to Peter’s slow, steady breaths, and the heart beating rapidly in his chest. It began to slow as her aggressive ticking relaxed to a soft tremor.

“You must be used to hearing that,” Peter said softly, his voice humming against her ear. She nodded, still shaking gently. Oil stained his lab coat.

“What now?” he asked Spine.

“She’s closer to human than robot, right now. Console her.”

Peter paused for a moment, then lifted his arms from his sides to hold her, one hand stroking the back of her head. The Spine stepped away, where he had been holding her head pressed to Peter’s chest, and Squeaks let herself relax into Peter’s comforting hug. He made little reassuring noises, but it was just hearing him breathe that calmed her. She could imagine they were her breaths, and with every exhalation she’d pretend she was letting out tension.

Eventually the tremors had subsided, leaving nothing but the acrid smell of melted plastic from Peter’s computer.

In the end, the only thing The Spine had been able to thing of for shutting down was the same as for her panic; if she felt human, she should try being human. Which was how she wound up in a dark room with enough bedding to build a small castle.

As time was wearing on, she was at least becoming more familiar with the functionality of her mind and body. In the silent darkness, she’d felt a tiny pulse in her head, which eventually registered itself as a clock. This did not help; without trying, she realised that she knew exactly what time it was. And exactly what time she’d closed the door to the room. Once she knew that, the concept of drifting off to sleep seemed all the more impossible when something whispered each passing second into her mind.

She’d tried lying down in the bed for a little while, but it just didn’t work. There was no angle she could find which didn’t involve jamming a fan, blocking a vent or lying on her own pointy arm. She’d given up when she discovered she had temperature sensors which started to bleep in protest.

She’d tried meditation. That quietened her thoughts, but only brought attention to all the sensors she hadn’t discovered yet. And as a relaxation technique which focuses on breathing, which she apparently didn’t do, it left a lot to be desired.

She even tried counting sheep, but when she tried to imagine a sheep, a search engine somewhere reported back over 1 million image matches. It took her a few minutes to work out how to mentally close the window again, desperately trying to drag the woolly visions from behind her eyes.

She’d cried, a fair bit. It hadn’t helped, but at least she got to find out what the low-oil warning sounded like.

Until she could learn to drown it out, her mind was so _noisy._

She had, at least, stopped panicking as boredom started to take over. She was a robot, with human memories and so many questions unanswered, but she’d also been in a darkened room for hours, and still didn’t feel a little drowsy. How did the others do it? The Spine seemed to think it just happened. That he just _willed_ it and-

-that was it, she thought with a start. Everything she’d done today had been at the will of her own mind. She’d thought a million sheep into existence and back again. If she _wanted_ to shut down, she just had to _tell_ herself to sh-

 

*****

 


	2. A life of blue matter

Peter Walter VI was working slowly on the dormant robot lying on the table. He would have been working faster, but his movements were limited by the hefty blue matter protection suit he’d donned in an attempt to placate The Spine. The metal man stood across the table from him, silent, tall, dark and grumpy.

“I still don’t get why you’re in such a mood, Spine,” he said eventually, his voice muffled, “I would’ve thought you’d been excited to have someone else at the Manor.”

After Squeaks had closed the door behind her in her attempt to fall asleep, The Spine hadn’t said another word to Peter. He’d stormed off without a sound, venting steam, and only mysteriously reappeared several hours later, wheeling the comatose Squeaks in front of him for Peter to start work on her. Then he’d watched Peter work with arms folded.

“She shouldn’t be here, Peter,” The Spine answered, his tone low. “If I’d known you were mucking about with blue matter behind our backs...”

“I don’t have to check in with you for every little thing I do.”

“This is _not_ a little thing.”

Peter sighed. After the accident which cost him his face, the robots – all of them – had become overly protective of him. If they let him work with blue matter at all, they shoved him into a protection suit, terrified of what might happen if he got hurt again. He was only mortal, after all, and they’d seen so many of his ancestors die before him. The humans’ lives must seem so painfully short to them. On the other hand, the cynical little voice in Peter’s head sometimes wondered how much of their behaviour was self-preservation. Peter was unattached, without kids. If something were to happen to him too soon, they could find themselves at best without a technician, or decommissioned. At worst, they could fall into the hands of the only other scientific family to have researched with other-dimensional matter, blue or green, or be dragged back into a world of war and death they’d sworn never to be a part of again.

But there were times when Peter was fed up with being told what to do, at his age. He’d installed blue matter in Squeaks without telling anyone, not even Rachel. He had planned to decommission the robot anyway, but he just hadn’t got round to it before the blue matter took hold. He kept telling himself that, anyway.

“I’m wearing the suit, aren’t I? And I’m still in one piece.”

“That’s not...” The Spine huffed, and lowered his head, “Peter, Colonel Walter made us a long time ago, and that was that. You still don’t really know how blue matter behaves, and you’re going around tinkering with it!”

“I’m not tinkering.”

“You’ve made another life out of it by accident!” The Spine’s voice boomed, and Peter looked up in surprise. The Spine was glaring at him with acrid green eyes.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You don’t know if it is or not.”

“How could it be?”

“She almost set the place on fire just trying to _breathe_.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“She still traumatised herself over it.”

“She’ll get better at it.”

“How am I sympathising better than you?! She’s practically human, and you’re trapping her in a body that isn’t hers!”

“If you’re so damn worried about my blue matter work, maybe you could shut up for a minute!”

The Spine’s jaw clicked shut, but he continued to fume silently. A soft beep permeated the angry silence, betraying The Spine’s overheating boiler.

“Go vent steam somewhere else, Spine,” Peter muttered, “before you melt your hat.”

The Spine made to walk out of the room, but paused at the doorway, swaying gently over his stabilisers.

“You’ve given her no choice in this, Peter,” he hissed, “and when she gets mad, it’ll be you she comes after.”

With that, he marched out of the room.

Peter carried on in silence, until satisfied he could close the core and the goggles. He would need to come back and make changes to her memory storage, but his hands had begun to shake. The Spine hadn’t shouted at him like that since he was a teenager. If making robots had been such a sore spot, why hadn’t he mentioned it before? Did he think Squeaks wouldn’t be able to hand it? Was life as a robot that difficult? Was he that discontent with his own existence?

He shook his head, and checked the coma-module was still plugged in to Squeaks’ head. It was a little strip of code which didn’t so much keep her powered down, but let her know she didn’t need to wake up right now if she didn’t want to. It acted as a kind of anaesthetic for the more delicate work where a robot waking up and rolling over would cause problems.

Then he went in search of The Spine. This was obviously something which needed talking about.

*****

Sleeping felt familiar. In that strange little way humans are subject to, awareness and time dropped away, and all she really recalled were the dreams when she started to pull herself back into consciousness.

She felt like she was floating upwards, out of the blackness of sleep. She spun gently in the dark. Her fingers began to twitch, and she raised them to her face. She was glowing slightly, a warm yellow light illuminating fleshy, pink fingers. She smiled to herself.

Still human. Rachel would awake at home, free from the confines of a robot shell.

She let herself roll upwards through the gloom, and waited for herself to wake up, but she stopped as her back bounced against something in the dark.

She turned upwards and put out her hands to feel what she’d hit. Above her was something flat, solid and cool, stretching as far as she could reach, like a sheet of glass. She tried to press up through it; it flexed reluctantly, but didn’t give way. She continued falling up towards it and let herself rest against it as she lay on her side, feeling the surface bow a little under her weight. It didn’t feel threatening; just pleasant. She looked down at herself. Warm, glowing skin shone dimly through a white, oil-stained lab coat tied closed with a rope. She was bare footed. She wiggled sunny toes.

She looked back to see a man floating a little way off, past the surface of the divide she couldn’t pass. He wore a similar laboratory coat, but clean and white, hands clasped behind his back. Dirty blonde hair fell around a mahogany mask, with a keyhole carved out of the centre.

She smiled, “Hello, Peter.”

The man looked down at her and spoke; “Hello. This is a Coma-code. I’m here to answer any questions you may have.” His voice was soft, as if speaking to someone he preferred not to wake.

“What do you mean, a coma-code?”

“I’m installed on robots when delicate operations are in progress. This is to prevent you powering up at an inopportune moment, though you can override the coma-code if you wish.”

A cool, painful reminder came washing over Squeaks. She looked at the human hands her dream had given her, sadly.

“I thought it must’ve been a bad dream. I’m really a robot?”

The Coma-code paused.

“I’m afraid I’m only a fragment of code. I can’t hold eloquent conversation.”

“I was talking to myself,” Squeaks replied. The Coma-code didn’t answer. “So you’re here to tell me I don’t have to wake up right now.”

“That’s correct.”

“But what if I want to?”

“The Coma-code is not meant to restrict, but to inform. If you still wish to power up, you can just override it, but please remain still on gaining control, as sudden movement could disturb operations.”

“How do I override the code?”

“I’m the interface. Just ask.”

Squeaks lay back, the weight of her head pressing up into the coma-code barrier. She could hear the gentle thrumming of fans in her unconscious body when she closed her eyes, but here she feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

“I can be Rachel, here. I don’t know how to be a robot.” Tears began to sting her eyes. She wiped them away, but felt her fingers become slick with oil.

“I’m afraid I’m only a fragment-“ the coma-code began, but Squeaks cut him off.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

She flexed her toes again. She’d miss having feet.

She rolled over to press her hands into the barrier, and pushed against it, sending her spinning weightlessly back downwards. If there was no rush, she could sleep, for now.

She closed her eyes, and fell back into the welcome, misty sleep.

It was easier, this time.


	3. Quantum path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bear with me, I'm bringing the science in!

Squeaks danced through a star specked darkness, spinning and twirling upwards towards the firmament of the coma-code. Her fingertips brushed it lazy as she flew. She’d flowed up and down through consciousness for the last day or so, letting herself be kept asleep, falling in love with the semi-conscious dreams she could slip in and out of. She had control in this space, and so she luxuriated in dancing through the stars. She beamed to herself; she’d learned to touch the Internet more gently with her mind, and found maths and physics programs and star data. This wasn’t just her dream; this was an accurate projection of the next arm over in the Milky Way, circling just slightly too close to a star much larger than the Sun, and much angrier. It was dying, furiously burning itself up in a frenzy which would soon destroy it; in only a million years, or so. She spread her arms out in a cosmic embrace; she’d made as accurate a model as she could hold in her mind, only this star generated in hundreds of onion layers, and further away she’d projected a few thousand light years of nearby stars onto the inside of a sphere. The white smear through the sky looked so much like the view of the Milky Way from home, but there were subtle differences.

There was no air, and time was different here. It flexed and bent itself around the nearby stars. She gathered stardust around her like a cloak, which billowed and whipped around her bare legs in the solar wind.

How did she ever dream without this?

As the star pulsed, she brought her arms in close; they were still arms, still hands, still cool pink fingers with nails. She still had toes, and dark brown hair blowing back over her shoulders. She tried to force shining silver metal to appear, but nothing happened. She pressed her legs together, trying to make them one long limb, but they were stubbornly fleshy. Even with all this power in her head, she couldn’t convince herself that she was a robot. It didn’t feel right.

She shrugged, as a gentle tinkling noise came from above her, like shards of glass softly falling. She raised an arm experimentally, and felt something more like grains of sugar fall down her fingers. She allowed herself to drift a little further upwards, and met no resistance; the barrier was gone.

Squeaks turned back to look at her star, preparing its furious supernova. She had to come back, and see how it would end. But for now, the truth was awaiting her.

The dream grew dark and slowly disappeared, to be replaced with the familiar hums of The Manor. Squeaks opened her eyes and looked about; she was lying on her back on a metal bench, in a  large, well-lit room with plastered walls and a set of shelves covered in pistons, hinges, mother boards, and all other sorts of metal goods. Peter stood not far away, watching her expectantly and holding a small memory stick in one hand; she suspected that it was the coma-module that had just been removed from her head. She sat up on the bench, her wheel-limb stretched out in front of her.

“Good morning, Peter.”

“Hey. Sorry for leaving this plugged in for so long,” Peter waved the stick vaguely, “I gather it can induce some weird things; you get stuck in conscious control, if you’re not careful.”

“It felt more like a lucid dream. You were there, though.”

“The coma-code was there. I just programmed it to have a familiar face. So to speak.”

“How vain are you that you project yourself into my head?” she said with a smirk; at least, she felt the curl of her lip, but there was nothing in her face to transfer it to. Peter ignored her comment, and turned about to put the stick away with a number of others, which took up their own little section on a shelf.

“So now that I’ve been powered down for 3 days, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“You’ve connected to your internal clock, then?”

“I worked it out when I was shut in a room on my own, so yes, now I can never forget what time it is. Don’t avoid the question. Why did you give Squeaks a blue core, and why do I remember being Rachel?”

She was trying to think of herself as Squeaks, but it was still fairly hard to believe. She had memories of being Rachel, and simply changing her name wasn’t going to fix that she felt like she was sitting in someone else’s body.

“How much do you know about Blue matter?” Peter asked.

“Not a lot. It’s a power source of sorts and all the Walter Robotics robots use it.”

“There’s that. The scientific community at large consider it to be dangerous and unstable, but it’s also tremendously efficient and environmentally friendly. The only emissions from our robots are steam, and a lot of that’s just cosmetic, these days.”

“When you say it’s unstable...”

Peter tapped his mask.

“What happened?”

“Huge blue matter explosion. My fault – forgot to carry the 1 – but that’s all I’m allowed to say about it.

“Anyway; a large amount of the actual power source work was carried out by my great great grandfather. I’ve spent more time on the theoretical work on blue matter’s further uses, especially with quantum physics.”

“I had you as a chemist.”

“Chemi-physical biological engineer. While I’m not sure why it happens yet, there’s long been a theory in the family that blue matter has some form of... quantity preference when paired with an electronic circuit.”

“That made a lot of sense.” Squeaks wanted to raise an eyebrow, but settled for lacing her voice with sarcasm.

“A certain amount of blue matter is contained in all of the robots’ cores. Once that amount Is set up, it’s very difficult to add any more and have it coalesce. The new matter just sort of floats on top. It’s the same if you try to take any away; it’s very difficult, but if you _are_ able to remove any it won’t combine with other blue matter. Like I said, I don’t know yet _why_ it does it, but it appears to be some form of quantum entanglement; the blue matter once connected to a circuit holds a connection within itself that remains even when actively separated, and the system can’t be added to.”

“You managed to get large numbers of particles to show quantum behaviour by _accident_?”

“A lot of technological revelations come around by accident.”

“They used to, and that’s probably not true either. Most things were probably just turned into ‘accident’ stories because no-one wrote them down in the first place. What does this have to do with me?”

“You – Rachel,” he corrected himself, “was having trouble with time delays. They were very short, but just enough to be discernible. It occurred to me that I could use this to test a theory I had. If blue matter could form this large-scale quantum state, could I set this up to eliminate the time delay? If I set up the core to ‘connect’ to the Squeaks robot, and then separated off a little bit to combine with Rachel’s operating kit - “ Peter paused to pick up the new pair of goggles which he’d given to Rachel when she’d come to America “ - then the robot and the kit would be connected by quantum interaction over any distance. Input from the goggles would be sent via the blue matter to the Squeaks robot, instantaneously.”

She was lost for words, and slowly reached for the goggles in his hand. She remembered how welcoming they’d felt when Rachel first touched them; they’d been warm, and hummed very gently. Squeaks held them now; the goggles felt as comforting as before. They felt like a part of herself; like she was a child, and this her oldest, most trusted teddy bear.

The goggles contained blue matter intrinsically linked to her core. Really they _must_ be a part of her.

“You’ve discovered a way to communicate instantly? Over any distance?”

“Clever, isn’t it?”

“Peter, this is revolutionary! You realise what this could mean for humankind – faster computers, remote operations, communications over huge distances... You’d be remembered as the father of space travel!”

“It’s brilliant,” he nodded, “but flawed. That’s where you come in.

“In our experiments, blue matter has only ever been paired with robots. I left you connected to your core for too long and you connected, and became sentient; I kinda expected that. But it never really occurred to me that organic creatures could pair, too, especially if the Blue matter was already paired with a robot.”

Squeaks connected the dots, “I have a blue core, which is connected with me. Rachel had the goggles, so they connected with her too.”

“I think so. Your core – if not all of it then at least the part of it contained in the goggles – is paired with a human. I’m not totally sure if the goggles are still paired to you.”

“Oh, they are,” said Squeaks, holding the goggles a little more tightly, “they feel... connected. It’s like you just gave me my arm back.” The goggles were on an elasticated strap, with a small black clip at the back. Squeaks unfastened it, and clipped the goggles around her neck. Its weight pulling on the back of her cabled neck was soothing, and she smiled, stroking the right lens absently with her thumb.

“Interesting,” Peter mused, “So they’ve managed to retain a connection with you and Rachel simultaneously.”

“So I’m kind of...” she paused, thinking of the right words, “part human.”

“If it helps you to think like that, yes. I built the connection so that you could have instant contact with Rachel; she could send movement and speech one way, and you could return what you saw and heard. When the human connection was added in, you started sending sensory information back, and she could send you fragments of memory.”

 _And emotions,_ she thought. Her memories from before were overlaid with Rachel’s thoughts and feelings; mostly she remembered the first time she woke after Peter had made the connection, Rachel’s building excitement as Squeaks made her way through the building to meet her, her astonishment when Squeaks turned to stroke the stone wall, and she could _feel_ it through her fingertips, and a faint sadness when they met, and Rachel knew she would have to leave forever, otherwise she’d let herself die controlling Squeaks body...

“Why didn’t you tell me about the core?” she asked, Rachel’s memory shining through in her mind.

“There was blue matter in the goggles. I was going to let her take it away, and that stuff is... Well, if certain people got hold of it, that could be a national security risk. It was dangerous enough to let her take it, but I couldn’t let her know what she had.”

Squeaks’ head was starting to swim. Peter’s story made sense, but the potential of it was ludicrous. If he was capable of these things, why did he keep it so quiet? “So... I’m a robot, but I still have human memories because I was connected to Rachel?”

“Succinctly.”

“So does she know?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure if she’d be aware of the connection the other way.”

“I get the feeling there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Squeaks, you have to understand – you’re something new. I’ll help where I can to figure this all out, but I think it’ll take a while.”

Squeaks realised she was gripping her goggles tightly, and let go.

“So what am I supposed to do?” she muttered

Peter shrugged, “whatever you like, I guess. Spine’s the only one who knows you’re here, you should go and say hi to the others. Maybe say thanks to Rabbit; she gave you this hat before you woke up.” Peter picked up a trilby from a hook on the wall; it was black, and pinstriped. She faintly remembered it falling off her head when she had been gasping for breath.

Part of her wanted to find somewhere quiet, to be alone with her thoughts, but she knew that her own mind was the most dangerous thing she could subject herself to right now. She could think later; for now, she needed distraction. She went to find the robots.

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I could lucid dream a Universe, I darn well would.


	4. Upstairs, downstairs

There was some advantage to having Rachel’s memories in her head. Even before Squeaks’ blue  core was installed, Rachel had spent too many hours wandering Walter Manor, alone or in pursuit of the robots, with a thread around her waist so she could always find her way back if she got lost. Peter had removed the thread when Squeaks had woken, but she didn’t need it now. Via Rachel’s jumbled memories, Squeaks’ computing power and some innate knowledge as to the location of all the WiFi hotspots, Squeaks found herself able to get to anywhere in the Manor without difficulty.

She wandered the Manor, looking for the robots to distract her, listening to Peter’s words replaying perfectly in her head. It was odd; she had perfect access to her memory storage, and could replay the conversation at will, right down to a strange overlaying of her previous thoughts and feelings. Her head was loud enough before all the voices were doubled one another. He had inadvertently created a robot with a human connection; she hardly knew what that could mean. Were her thoughts now travelling back the other way, back to Rachel? Or was that connection maintained by the goggles, so it wouldn’t work without Rachel wearing them? What did the connection mean in the first place... how much of the robot was Squeaks, and how much Rachel?

She shook her head, willing the thoughts to go away. This was why she’d wanted to find the robots, to distract her with their gentle madness so she couldn’t think for too long.

She shortly came to the entrance hall she’d first walked to with Peter, when he’d first woken Rachel up. It was late in the day, and a yellow beam of sunlight shone from a window across the hall to illuminate the top of the spiral staircase. Through the window Squeaks could see the slowly changing orange glow of the evening sky. She rolled over to the top of the stairs, and stared down. She’d searched as much of this floor as she knew, and there had been no one around, which meant that the robots would be on another floor. She looked down at the wheel at the bottom of her leg, and frowned, rocking back and forth in thought. Walter Manor was not so helpful as to have ramps or lifts, except for the one which descended into the depths to the giraffe Delilah. QWERTY had carried Squeaks over a grating before, but that had been in the Hall Of Wires; she doubted, or perhaps hoped, that QWERTY’s wires didn’t reach this far.

So with no legs, no ramps, no lifts, no wires and no people, she found herself stuck at the top of the stairs. She idly grabbed the banister with one hand, and stretched out towards the other rail, but no good; the steps were grand, and far wider than she could reach. But she looked over at the banister in her hand, and chuckled to herself.

The banister was red, a huge polished beam of beautifully deep mahogany, slightly narrower than her torso, and certainly thick enough to take her weight. She tapped idly on the wood as she looked about for something soft for padding, and set her eye on a thick rug not far away. She went over and picked it up; it was large and unwieldy, and looked old, with small patches threadbare and others scorched. The border was burgundy, and floral patterns wound from the edges to the middle in a display of exaggerated class and effort. It might’ve been expensive, a long time ago, and Squeaks couldn’t help but suspect that it was from before the robots – before the hunks of metal with an inadvertent knack for destruction.

Still, it was all she had to hand, and so she wrapped it around her torso, pinning it to her sides with her elbows. It didn’t quite go twice round her, and hung from her chest down to what would’ve been her ankles, if she’d had them.

Then she looked down at the banister; it gently curved outward as it descended, and curled under at the end. There were other ways she could do this but, well, if she had the skills, she thought she might as well use them. She closed her eyes, uploaded an image of the room, and started processing: a measure of the gradient of the slope; her approximate mass, and where it was centred; she downloaded a coefficient of friction for wood and carpet…

There were only a few seconds of expectant silence before she opened her eyes, nodded her head as if satisfied, took hold of the banister in both hands, swung her body up onto it, and let go.

She slid down the banister, picking up speed and leaning herself into the curve of the bend as she’d calculated, setting her wheel spinning forwards in the air as the end of the banister drew closer, and then threw her arms up into the air as she flew off the end, propelling herself into a backflip to land expertly on the floor below, wheels screeching on the marble floor as they spun her to a stop. Her body clattered loudly as all her metal parts shuddered under the strain of the impact.

In the moments which followed, the rug she’d used to protect herself and the staircase fell pathetically from around her with a _flump_. She lowered her arms and, just as she was eyeing up the archways to decide where she should look next, heard the sound of clapping from the balcony above.

Rabbit was stood, leaning her elbows on the railing at the opposite end of the hall, applauding Squeaks with gloved hands, a lazy sidelong smile on her face.

“That was good,” she called out, with her deep-wine voice, overlaid with almost sarcastic New Jersey overtones, “I dunno why I never thought of trying that before.”

“Probably because you have legs,” Squeaks called back. She crossed her arms with exasperation, eyeing up the distance between her and Rabbit. “Where on earth did you come from? I’ve been looking up there for ages!”

Rabbit shrugged, “I was on a different floor. Hold on a sec.”

Rabbit made her way down the stairs, running her hand down the banister and making tiny hissing and clicking noises as she went. She wore a short black playsuit, her core glowing through the slats in her chest, red leather gloves and matching boots. She was wearing long pink hair today, which she had plaited down her back. Squeaks put a hand up to her own head, instinctively tucking the hair behind her ears before remembering that she didn’t have Rachel’s straight brown hair. She made a mental note to get a wig at some point*.

As Rabbit reached the bottom step, Hatchworth also appeared from a nearby archway, wielding a fishing rod and a bunch of flowers. He turned to Squeaks and beamed, “Rachel! We have not seen you in a long time!”

“That’s not Rachel, dummins. It’s Squeaks.”

Hatchworth looked confused, “isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not anymore,” said Squeaks, “I used to be Rachel but now I’m... er... Well now I’m me, apparently.”

She realised she was nervously gripping the strap of her googles, and let go, “How did you know, Rabbit?”

Rabbit shrugged, “I could hear ya kind of whispering in your sleep. Rachel didn’t sleep here. You sounded lonely, so I got you a hat. Where is your hat?”

“Back in the lab. I’ll get it later. Although,” Squeaks looked back up towards the stairs she’d come down, “I’m not entirely sure how to get back there.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Rabbit turned to Hatchworth, her oddball eyes gleaming, “Squeaks had the best idea – riding down the banister!”

The two robots took to it maybe better than Squeaks would’ve liked**, and started making some kind of sport out of it, with extra marks for style. Squeaks thought she might snap something laughing when Rabbit flew down past her _a la Surfboard,_ emitting a high-pitched squeal all the way down. They even managed to carry Squeaks up the stairs and stand her up on the banister so she could roll all the way on her wheels, arms outstretched.

After a while, it occurred to Squeaks that the fact that she existed in her own right had been almost glossed over. In stark contrast to the drama and grave worry when The Spine and Peter found out, Rabbit and Hatchworth practically shrugged it off.

Squeaks smiled inwardly. She liked friends like these; the ones where you could be apart for years, but the moment you come back it’s like you never left.

It wasn’t until Rabbit was trying to successfully maneuver a one-handed handstand (for the fourth time) that Squeaks looked up and realised Hatchworth was staring steadily at her, his head cocked to the side.

“I’m guessing you have a core,” he said slowly.

Squeaks nodded quietly. She’d rather hoped they’d skipped the subject.

“Where is it?”

“Hatchy!” Rabbit flew off the end of the banister and cartwheeled dramatically to a halt, “that’s no question to ask a lady!”

“I wasn’t being rude! I just – ours are in our chests, you can see them. I can’t see yours.”

Hatchworth looked a little bashful, and the smallest puff of steam interrupted the ensuing silence from his stove-pipe.

“I think it’s in the small of my back. Peter put it somewhere I wouldn’t notice.” The more Squeaks thought about it, the more it seemed that Peter had really hoped no-one would find out what he was up to. He’d put her core where no-one would see, and secreted away the other piece in some panel of her goggles.

Rabbit and Hatchworth both stared at her, a smirk spreading over their faces. Hatchworth gave out another spurt of steam, and Rabbit making a strange jiggling noise as her components shook against one another. They were _laughing,_ both trying hard to suppress their giggles.

“You mean,” Hatchworth said with a quivering voice, “it’s in your butt?”

Squeaks rolled her eyes as the pair of them collapsed into unrestrained sniggering. This was an avenue of their humour she’d never quite found funny. She wasn’t quite sure how they retained the immature sense of humour after being around for so long.

“C’mon, gang,” came a sober baritone voice from an archway behind the giggling pair, “the panel’s in her lower back.”

Rabbit roared as The Spine strode over to stand with them at the bottom of the stair, wiping the oil from her eyes, “Th’Spine’s seen her butt!”

As The Spine shook his head, arms crossed, Squeaks tuned out the sound of laughter as her ears homed in on the undertones of moving air. Rabbit _breathed,_ she realised; she could hear the wooden echoes of bellows expanding and compressing in her chest. It pained her to hear it – there were so many aspects of her humanity which left holes in their absence, and the lack of breath and a heartbeat were among them. Despite herself, Squeaks felt a pang of jealousy.

She tuned back into the group as the laughter subsided, The Spine’s stoic attitude leaching into the room. He turned his head to look down at her, and nodded slowly. Squeaks tried to smile back, but with the absence of the relevant moving parts settled for nodding back at him. His green eyes, still mostly shielded from the light under his fedora, felt like they focussed on a spot just behind her eyes, pressing into her mind. It had felt that way back in the lab when Peter was first telling him that Squeaks was sentient; monitoring her movements coolly, almost critically, giving off the impression that he… what was it? Did he not want her around? He had said nothing unkind to her yet, but his attitude felt like he was intensely more aware of her presence than the other two robots. His steady gaze was starting a strange prickle at the back of Squeaks neck, and she rubbed the spot nervously.

“And another thing,” Hatchworth continued as Squeaks pulled herself back to the conversation at hand, “How come your eyes aren’t lit?”

She shrugged, “How come yours are? Mine are minicameras in porcelain.”

“Ours have a core-link, I think,” Hatchworth answered, nodding knowingly, “Matter in the orbitals to keep them powered.”

Squeaks peered into Hatchworth’s open face. Sure enough, she could see the blue swirling in his eyes; blue matter glowed there. Her eyes darted from Hatchworth to The Spine and Rabbit’s face, looking into the three green-glowing orbitals. She still didn’t know why they had green eyes.

As she opened her mouth to ask, The Spine put out both his arms over her and Rabbit’s shoulders, “Enough of this chatter. Rabbit, the Walter Workers are looking for you. Time for a check-up.”

Rabbit screwed up her face and let out the high-pitched moan of a child being told it was time to leave the playground, “But I don’t _wanna_ , Spine!”

The Spine simply ignored her, turning to Squeaks instead, “and we ought to introduce you too, Squeaks, if you’re sticking around. They’ll be very interested to meet you.”

Squeaks nodded, “Sure, why not.”

“We’ll have to get her back upstairs, Spine,” Rabbit pointed out, nodding her head at the staircase.

“I got it,” answered The Spine, and in one smooth movement had bent down to pick Squeaks up, carrying her towards the steps. She stifled a giggle, hands clasped behind his neck just in case. As they climbed the steps, Squeaks worked hard on looking anywhere but at The Spine, ignoring the prickling sensation on her neck as it intensified, and trying to ignore the fact that he’d strategically interrupted the conversation before she could ask him why his eyes were green.

***

*Disconcertingly, she felt the note write itself down and file itself under ‘memos’.

**Given that she had the strong suspicion that they weighed twice as much as her and would probably break the wooden railing without even trying.

*****

 


	5. V.O.P.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone interested, what Squeaks models here is a Type 1a supernova. Mmmm science.

The next morning began with a supernova.

The robots had made a habit of ‘sleeping’ when the humans went to bed, either through boredom or not wanting to wake the humans in the night by mistake. So after a day of mucking about and meeting the Walter workers (and being introduced to a very large spanner), when the lights went out the robots retreated, each to their own space. Squeaks headed back to the lab where she’d been stored, which was about the closest thing she could consider to feel like hers, and powered down for the night; it was much easier this time. She could even set an internal timer to power her up at a reasonable hour.

She felt the strange internal click when that time had come, and her mind booted into consciousness. As it almost slipped by, Squeaks caught hold of that strange state in the middle - the one where she had control. She smiled to herself.

She drew up a model of the galaxy, and this time she went _up_ , out of the arms to a galaxy nearby, and filtered the black space for a slowly changing light signal...

There it was. She made another model from the data, bubbling through the calculations in her mind, and then opened her eyes.

In her old body, she hung in the blackness before a huge, white orb. She supposed she ought to think of the body as Rachel’s, but it still felt like one she’d left, not one that was never hers. She looked down at her feet and smiled, letting her legs kick slowly like she was treading water. She put her hand to her cheek, feeling her lips stretched in a grin. It was so much better knowing that she could smile. The metal face she wore when she woke up was so stiff.

The star in front of her was blindingly white, hanging still in the absence, a giant ball of gas. But if that was big, it was nothing compared to the glowing red beast a few AU away. It dominated over the space around it, towering over Squeaks. From it came a trail of dust, pulled from the skin of the star, being patiently tugged away by the little white star.

A binary system, between a few dwarf and a red giant, one slowly bleeding onto the other. Squeaks had started her simulation at just the right time; the comparatively little white dwarf was, by her calculations, about 1.3 times the mass of the Sun, but it was sucking mass from its neighbour with each passing moment. Squeaks let the model run, fast-forwarding in her mind, watching as the stars spun slowly round one another, dust swirling through the empty space _. 1.37_. She counted down the ages as the pressure rose in the star. _1.39_ , _1.41..._

As the mass approached the Chandrasekhar limit, she let time slow back to normal. The intense pressure in the heart of the star, unseen, forced it to burn once more, ferociously. Soon it wouldn’t be able to withstand its own existence.

Feeling a little drama was required, Squeaks modelled a pair of black-rimmed sunglasses, put them on, and leaned sideways on nothing in particular, arms crossed.

The star exploded.

Stardust raced towards her in huge, luminous clouds. The outer layers of the star had buckled under the explosion and tore silently past one another. Soon she was enveloped in a cloud of burning stardust, and her vision was just a searing field of white. The heat and radiation were more than enough to vaporise, but she imagined a warm, sandy breeze. She switched off the visible light, and imaged the other colours, representing them in blues and greens. Beams of energy roared passed her – the model became a symphony of turquoise, coursing through the stardust like sunlight through the clouds.

The majesty of it was gorgeous, her heart swelling as she watched from inside the supernova. She’d learned about them, but to be _inside_ it... She laughed as she let the clouds cling to her hair, which was starting to spread out in a haze behind her.

In the blissful silence, she turned the white light back on and let time speed by again, hanging still in the cloud as it whipped past her. The star got brighter still, for a while, and then the light slowly faded away. Squeaks slowed the time again and stretched out towards to the spinning light that was left.

Around her there was emptiness, now. The star had thrown itself further out, and from the huge white orb all that remained was a small, quickly spinning ball, flashing like a lighthouse. It was maybe the size of a small city, but from here it looked no larger than a beachball.

It was a pulsar, the heart of a now-dead white dwarf. The core of an immense, slowly turning star was now compressed into a ball of neutrons, spinning like a top as all its rotational momentum was forced into the smaller space. Squeaks had modelled it as a small, grey ball – despite the modelling power in her head, science still didn’t really know how the neutrons would react to one another in the highly compressed space. If she’d tried to model it, the program would’ve crashed by now.

She let the model close, everything around her fading to black. She could do practically _anything_ here. Her mind was a force to be reckoned with. She would’ve felt powerful, but she was still giddy with glee from her dance though the heart of a supernova. She adored space, and now she could visit any part of space she could ever have dreamed of.

It was morning, now, and the others would probably be awake and wondering about the Manor. But the power of the lucid dreams was a greater itch. _What else?_ she wondered in the fuzzy space of the dream, _what do I want to see?_

A bittersweet thought answered from the back of her mind – home. Not so long ago, she would be sitting wearing a pair of goggles and would lift them and be home. Now she was Squeaks... There was no home to go back to. No view from the study window, no kiss from a loving husband. Instead, there was metal casing and the constant reminder that the name, the voice, the breaths she knew so well simply didn’t belong to her. She wanted to go _home_.

Almost without wanting it to, a room took shape in her head. Squeaks stood by a desk in the corner. She was in the study, where Rachel spent most of her time plugged into the kit which connected her to Squeaks. Everything she could remember was there. It was a small, squarish room, the sort in which a double bed would be a bit too big. The walls and floor were unobjectionably beige. The desk behind her was small, in a pine veneer, covered in study folders. Another desk stood against the adjacent wall, grander, more expensive, with a large black desk chair. Everywhere else, there were boxes piled high, overflowing with books she’d just not had the time to unpack. There was even a burst of afternoon sun from the window in the corner.

Squeaks rubbed her fingers together, feeling them. She was Rachel here, too, though this time in a blue checkered short and a pair of jeans. They were the last thing she could remember wearing at home.

It was perfect. Every shape was crystal clear - and was agony to her. She wanted nothing more than to be here, to stay here, to be home again, she realised. She just wanted to take off the goggles and go home. She lifted a hand to wipe away an errant tear, but her hand came away oily again.

She left the room to the hallway, a short corridor with doors coming off. _Doors_ , she thought simply. _There are doors_. She could see her dining table through the door to the right, and her bathroom to the left. She opened the eggshell-white door to the bathroom, a crisp white, narrow room with half empty bottles scattered around the edge of the bathtub. Squeaks turned to see her reflection in the mirror over the sink, and frowned. Where the mirror should have been, there simply hung a flat red rectangle. It was devoid of depth or shade, just simply a block of uniform colour. She tilted her head, tried walking in and out the room, but the reflection wouldn’t work. She held her palm out flat to touch where the mirror should be, and pressed.

Nothing happened, for a moment. She tried to pull her hand away, but she didn’t move. She tried turning her head, but still nothing. Everything had simply stopped, stuck holding her hand to the broken mirror.

A moment later she began to panic. Why couldn’t she move? How long could she stay stuck like this? She tried pulling her hand back again, and the space around her drained of colour. Soon the room was grey, even the mirror which she was unable to pull her eyes from, as she grew more frightened, not understanding what was going on.

And then she was released as everything, her body, the room, the whole model, simply disappeared. It flicked off, leaving her once again in her own mind, confusion quickly replacing her heartache.

Squeaks felt something beeping incessantly in her head and opened the waiting window; it was an error message. The program had crashed in trying to model what she wanted.

“Seriously?” she said to herself, hanging generated a new body which hung in the air, holding the error message like a piece of paper, “You managed an exploding star, but touching a mirror was a bit too much?”

The error message rewrote itself: the mirror hadn’t loaded properly. She was directly interacting with a non-functioning part of the model. Squeaks sighed.

“I manage to go home for 2 minutes before it kicks me out again.”

She contemplated running the program again, but stopped herself. Instead she woke up, opening her eyes in the morning light of the Manor, backed up in the corner of the lab room. She’d barely gained consciousness before she set her wheels going, and flew out of the room. She needed to find Peter, she’d decided, and he’d either be having breakfast or working in one of the other labs. The labs were closer, so she sped down the hallway, briefly looking in on each room as she passed. Ten doors down she found him, sitting cross-legged in a desk chair. The Spine was leaning on a steel table not far away, him arms crossed – as Squeaks squealed to a halt in the doorway, grabbing the doorpost to steady herself, his jaw set closed. Peter and The Spine both looked up at her as she stopped in the doorway, their conversation at an immediate halt. Squeaks shooed the thought from her mind that she might’ve been the topic of their conversation.

“In a hurry, Squeaks?” asked Peter genially. He was holding a large plastic cup of bubble milk tea, absentmindedly stirring it with a straw.

“I wanted to ask you a favour,” Squeaks responded, ignoring the hot prickle down the back of her neck now that The Spine was staring her down again.

“Fire away.”

“Can I talk to Rachel?”

Peter stopped stirring, and set the milk tea down on his lap, “Not really, no. Why?”

“I was just generating a dream and – what do you mean, no?”

“Think about it, Squeaks. You’re a remarkably similar rendition of Rachel. Don’t you think she’d get a little weirded out gearing her own voice at the other end of a telephone?”

Squeaks had possibly the best frame of reference here.

“I imagine she’d be about as weirded out as I’ve been forced to be for the last few days, don’t you think?”

“Yep. First time you woke up, you freaked out so badly you blew up a computer. You’re a robot, you can get away with that now. What do you think that would do to her? She might faint. Besides, she gave me very specific instructions not to contact her again.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Squeaks might have noticed The Spine’s look of surprise when he said this, but she was preoccupied with a growing feeling of irritation.

“When did she say that?”

“As she left the Manor. Come to think of it, I don’t think she wanted me to pass that on.”

He continued vaguely prodding at his drink. It was faintly annoying, like he was brushing her off. Squeaks started to get irate, which made her face plates start to heat up. The temperature alert only added to her frustration, The Spine’s gaze now forgotten. If she’d had teeth, they would have been clenched as she spoke.

“Peter, I am a robot of _your_ creation. _You’re_ the one who stuck me with someone else’s memories. I’m sure I’m a fascinating experiment to you, but in the meantime I’m the one stuck in a body with no feet, no face and none of the people I love, and I’m stuck in here playing with the _tin men_ forever. And you don’t want me to talk to Rachel _because she said so?”_

The Spine looked hurt, but Squeaks didn’t really care right now. She was bristling: the game was over. This man set her up as a toy. By not bothering to unplug her core, he had trapped her mind in a metal box, and it was only just dawning on her what that meant. She had friends and family she could never contact again. She’d made a home and a life – she was _married_. There was a man back in England that she would never see again. And then there was the problem Peter would never have to deal with – she would outlive them all. She might live for hundreds of years of years, now. Her family would be dead. Her husband, dead. Even Peter wouldn’t have to live with her anger. She’d never wanted to watch the world die.

Peter looked up, apparently unaware of the tension in the air. Squeaks would’ve been flaring her nostrils and breathing heavily if she could, but she wasn’t even able to do that.

“I need to give you some upgrades,” he said, looking at a tapioca bubble skewered on the end of his straw, “your face might melt if you can’t cool it down.”

Squeaks stared at him. He looked like he couldn’t care less. She could’ve slapped him, and the image dashed across her mind before everything went blank.

She realised she was rolled forward when she came to. Her arms hung limply in front of her and her head lolled. She couldn’t open her eyes, her vision just a black screen with the letters “VOP” slowly flashing green in front of her. She heard Peter’s voice off to her right.

“Oops.”

“Oops? You got her that mad and all you’ve got is oops?” The Spine sounded mad.

“I thought she just needed to let it out! She needed to let off steam. Pardon the expression.”

“Just reactivate her.” Squeaks heard a little hiss of steam. ‘VOP’ was still bouncing behind her eyes.

Peter sighed, “OK, Squeaks, you’re good.”

With a ping, the green letters disappeared and Squeaks straightened up, opening her eyes. Peter was still leaned back in his chair, toying with his drink. The Spine had stopped staring at Squeaks from under the brim of his hat, and his gaze was now lowered to the floor with his arms crossed.

“What the hell was that?” she snapped.

“’Vow Of Peace’. You’re not allowed to hurt the humans,” The Spine said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I installed it when I was studying your core,” said Peter, “just in case. Any attempt at aggressive physical contact and your physical capabilities are deactivated. You can only be reactivated by human command.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you! I just wanted to give you a damn good slap.”

“Your hands are made of metal, Squeaks. With edges. You could draw blood pretty easily.”

“Through a solid wood mask?” Squeaks said sarcastically.

“That’s not the point. As a robot you’re capable of accidental bodily harm. All my robots have the V.O.P installed.”

“If it helps,” interjected Spine, looking up and cocking his head at Peter, “I’m not allowed to slap him either.”

“No, Spine, it doesn’t help,” Squeaks turned back to Peter, “So after trapping me like this you can just shut me down at will? What kind of psycho are you?”

“I can’t shut you down at will, that’ll only happen if you try to hurt anyone. Could you imagine what would happen if you hurt someone by accident outside the Manor, maybe even kill them? The population at large would demand that all the robots were shut down. It’s better not to have the option.”

He finally put his drink on the desk, and leaned forward with his elbows resting on his thighs, “listen, I understand why you’re mad, I really do. I made a mistake leaving you plugged in and now you’re here permanently, and we’re all glad to have you around, but I do understand what I’m putting you through. I’m sorry, alright? We’ll do whatever we can to make it easier for you, and if there’s something bothering you about your new body then let me know and I’ll try to put it right. We’ll do what we can, but think about Rachel – put yourself in her shoes, you can do that far better that any of us. It’s no good trying to put you in touch with her. Firstly, she told me not to, secondly, she’ll freak out, thirdly, it won’t achieve anything because you’ll just be more upset that you can’t go back, and lastly...” Peter scratched the back of his head hesitantly, “Squeaks, you’ll outlive her. You’re basically young forever now, your body with only change when you want it to. If you’re in contact with Rachel you have to watch what happens when you grow old and die.”

“It’s hard enough with the ones you love,” interrupted The Spine, his eyes back on the floor, “I imagine it’s nearly impossible when it’s a version of yourself.”

The room fell silent. Peter watched Squeaks expectantly, but she’d fallen into silence. She’d managed to ignore the gravity of the situation for the last couple of days, but having let the words out into the word, it all started to press down on her. Peter was right, there was no way she could get in touch with Rachel now. Apart from all the things he’d said, Rachel would be miserable that the return to Walter Manor now wasn’t even her choice. She couldn’t come back here, because the body she’d used was occupied by something else. And something else had begun to nag at her. It troubled her deeply, because she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“The goggles,” she said quietly, automatically lifting her hand to where they hung from her neck, “They were my connection to her. If she’s not here then what happens to the connection? Is it going to fade? I… I’m scared I’ll forget who I am.”

Peter sighed, “I still don’t know. But if that worries you, I’ll have a look and try to find out.”

The concept terrified her. There was being stuck in a body that wasn’t yours, and then there was watching as the memories of her life slipped away from her. What would be left?

She nodded, and silently turned and left the room. She could go and find the others, or walk the Manor, but her heart wasn’t in it. As the heaviness of what she was faced with started to weigh down, the colour felt like it was draining out of her mind. Even the incessant clicks and warning beeps in her head were dulled. Everything felt muted. And Squeaks felt… tired.

She trundled back to the lab, and stood in the corner, looking around as the world seemed to press in. The trilby Rabbit had given her sat on the workbench nearby. She rested her hand on it, and closed her eyes. She let herself power down, and didn’t bother setting an alarm this time.

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcannon sidenote: I've got it into my head that since Bunny and Chelsea started getting hella into bubble tea, they'll have drunk it around Peter at some point, and I bet he likes it too. But he doesn't drink around other people, so cue 20 minutes of toying with his bubble tea...


	6. Deactivated: Day 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that? Easter holidays mean more time for writing? Why I do believe you're right :)

Two days later, Peter was starting to get worried.

After he had told her that he wouldn’t help her contact Rachel, Squeaks had left the room without a word, and when he’d looked for her later she’d been powered down in the corner of her preferred lab room. That was strange, to begin with; he was sure she’d only just woken up when she came to talk to him in the first place. But then she simply didn’t wake up again, for two days. Peter would walk past the room expectantly, looking for some change, but she would be just where she was before, her eyes closed, her hand placed on a hat on the bench next to her. She might’ve been more upset than he’d realised.

Every time he walked past the room and saw that she was there, he felt all the more guilty. He knew that she was right, of course. By making her a core in the first place, by connecting it to Rachel’s goggles without testing it on himself first, by not unplugging Squeaks, in every way he had been responsible for creating someone with memories that weren’t hers. And he had no idea what would happen to the connection over time. He briefly pictured a blank, smiling Squeaks, all her memories wiped away, her personality drained. He shook the image from his mind – that couldn’t be. The other robots all had distinct traits of their own. Squeaks acted identically to Rachel, but that didn’t mean that the link was the only thing which made her that way. He hoped so, anyway. There was so much still to study about the blue matter.

But even with the guilt clogging his head, the thought had still emerged shiftily in his head: by a connection over a relatively short period, Squeaks had woken one day with Rachel’s mind, or something very like it. He’d gone beyond what the previous robots had achieved. This was more than creating life, this was _transferring_ it. Squeaks had said before that, in the core connection, there was the possibility of zero-time long distance connections, but Peter could see the seeds of something more. This could mean _immortalility_. A way for humankind to transfer themselves to a mechanical being, who could live on forever as long as their parts were regularly replaced! An end to death, to aging! And it would create a species more robust, who could get on a spaceship and reach another planet alive, and step out onto it without needing oxygen to breathe. Humankind could spread their wings and escape from their small, vulnerable planet to the universe, and never die…

Peter stopped himself, scratching his head. Except it wouldn’t be humankind, really, would it? It would be a legion of robots with all their thoughts and beliefs and memories, but it wouldn’t be the original person… or would it? Squeaks was her own being, but that was because she was bought here by mistake, and the original human, Rachel, was still alive, so Squeaks couldn’t be Rachel. _Rachel_ was Rachel. But surely being the same person only required the same mind, not the same body, after all, humans recycle their whole body about every seven years anyway. So if, with intent and consent, all your memories and reactions and feelings were copied to a robot and then you were to die shortly afterwards, does that make the robot you?

The thought turned into a headache. Not only did he not know the answers, Peter knew that it wouldn’t work anyway without a lot more research. He looked at Squeaks: she had been an accidental creation, but now she was here he would need her for research. They could answer as many questions together as they could manage, and he would really try. Rachel was a physicist, after all, so Squeaks would understand the importance of what could be achieved here. In time.

For now, she was silent, and she had been so angry. There was so much to process, so much neither of them knew or understood. She deserved time to work it out. Peter just hoped she won’t grow to loathe him for what he’d done.

 _I’ll make it up to her,_ he thought, leaning on the doorpost to her room and looking thoughtfully at her. He had built Squeaks in a hurry and had never intended her to be used long-term, so there were enough problems with the body which frustrated her, and plenty of upgrades she would need, with enough time. She was stuck working out manoeuvrers between floors because she had no legs – well that wouldn’t be fixable straight away. Legs were notoriously difficult to get right. Humans have so many muscles and interacting bones to help them move on two legs, and stabilisers to help. Peter had never been too good at replicating them for his robots, and he couldn’t find indepth blue prints for the ones Peter Walter I had made, and even they weren’t perfect; The Spine’s gait had always been odd, and his balance gyros were never quite balanced. He would need to take his time, a couple months at best. Squeaks struggled to express herself because her face plates didn’t really move that much – her jaw opened and closed, but there wasn’t much movement otherwise. He stroked the side of his mahogany mask with a finger; he could sympathise with that one. But even that would take a fair amount of work. He needed an upgrade he could provide quickly, just something to show her that he cared and was willing to help her.

It occurred to him: the temperature regulation. She’d got so angry before that her systems had run wild, and the only cooling system she had in place was a few fans. He’d felt the heat coming from her face, which must’ve meant she wasn’t far from glowing hot, and that could’ve caused permanent damage to her systems – never mind her clothes.

He smiled to himself. He’d plug in the coma-code and upgrade her temperature regulation. Maybe it would help.

*****


	7. Deactivated: Day 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: swear words.

Peter was having to refrain from hopping excitedly, in case he damaged the young automaton. The work was marvellous, although this time he couldn’t lay claim to the ideas behind it – that was someone else’s genius. He’d just put it into practice.

He was in one of his labs, with Squeaks stood dormant in front of him. He hadn’t tried to lift her onto a lab bench this time, as he didn’t want to wake her; he wanted this to be a pleasant surprise. He gently removed the coma-code stick from her head, and placed a hand on her shoulder, waiting for the gentle ticking noises that she made when she powered up. Nothing came but dead silence. He’d hoped putting her under the coma-code might give her a gentle nudge into consciousness. Every day the robots had been getting more fractious that she was still asleep.

Although he didn’t really want to, he felt like he didn’t have a lot of choice. He opened the panel in her back, which contained her core; the core itself was safely hidden and protected under another layer, but at this level he’d put in a power-up button when he was installing Squeaks’ V.O.P. code.

He pressed the button and closed the panel up, stepping back as Squeaks hummed into life. She straightened up, and lifted her hands to her face to cover her eyes. She looked disoriented.

“What the- Peter, did you wake me up?”

“I did. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Did it occur to you that maybe I don’t feel like talking?” Her voice was dull and tired. She had crossed her arms, now, but her heart didn’t seem to be in it.

“You’ve been powered down for 4 days.”

“So take a hint.” She looked around at the room, her eyes narrowing, “did you move me?”

“More than that. I’ve given you a small upgrade.”

Squeaks was staring at him now. Her eyes were slowly widening, but the rest of her body had gone still.

“I thought it would help,” continued Peter, waiting for some kind of reaction. “I know you were upset, so I replaced your heat extractor fans. It’s something I read about a while ago – if you put sawtooth cuts in a metal surface, then if it gets hot then you can get water to run _uphill_ via the Leidenfrost effect, and it means you can send droplets round your system like a maze cooling everything as -” Peter faltered as Squeaks stared him down. She wasn’t moving, and her face was impossible to read, but that felt worse that if she were talking. She’d never been silent like this.

After a few seconds, there were small tapping and hissing noises, the hissing moving around her head. The sound accelerated, and a small but steady trail of steam issued from the gap between her face plates and her jaw.

“Your face must be getting hot,” Peter said timidly, taking a step back, “the cooling system’s kicking in. See? It’s working.”

Squeaks moved then. She wheeled right past him silently and out of the room, and as he looked out of the door he saw her dart back into her room. He followed, and caught up with her just as she was backing into the corner she slept in. As he walked into the room, she looked up at him, steam now coming from her face in a steady stream.

“Why did you follow me in here?” Squeaks asked. Her voice was getting quieter, and not in a way that inspired confidence. It was a voice of warning.

“I just want to talk to you. I want to help you.”

With that, there was an almighty hiss, and Squeaks whizzed out of her corner to stand inches from Peter’s chest.

“You wanted to help me?!” Squeaks was hissing furiously into his face, clouds of stream pouring upwards and making him cough. He tried to back away, but she simply followed him until he was backed up to the wall, “None of what has happened here is up to me, do you understand that? I woke up here against my will. I can’t even touch you without powering down. I can’t walk up and down the damn stairs. The _only_ thing I can do here where I thought no-one could start mucking around with me is go to sleep. So you wake me up to tell me that which I’ve been sleeping you’ve been prodding around my body trying to _fix_ it? Did it ever occur to you to _ask_ if I wanted my face spewing steam like a fucking train?” She was shaking with anger, little clinking sounds ringing in her chassis. Peter was sweating under the steam Squeaks was breathing into his face.

“I couldn’t ask you, you were asleep...”

“ _Then the answer is no_ ” she bellowed, her fists balled up, “You might be used to your automatons letting you do whatever the hell you want, but they are _not_ human. You’ve got me now. You don’t wake me up to tell me what fun you had pulling me apart. It’s sick!”

She halted, backing away from him slowly, “I’m not even allowed to touch you, Peter. I want to punch you, but your precious V.O.P. code will just put me to sleep.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even...”

“You didn’t think? Big surprise.” Squeaks backed into her corner, now gripping the goggles around her neck.

“If you can’t work it out yourself, let me spell it out for you. I’m a scientist too, but that doesn’t mean you can test things on me without asking me first. I am not your science experiment. I am your bloody _prisoner_. In my sleep is the only place I have control, so I’m going back to sleep. _You_ don’t wake me. _No-one_ wakes me. You don’t disturb me, you don’t touch me, and let me make this incredibly clear to you,” she paused for a steadying breath she didn’t need to take, “you do not change me or upgrade me without my clear consent. Get it?”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“I am waiting for an answer, Peter. I don’t trust you not to take silence as consent.”

Peter coughed, “Uh… if I’m not allowed to wake you up, I can’t get your permission to make upgrades….”

Squeaks hand flew up in exasperation, “well done genius, now you get it. Now leave me alone.”

Then she was silent, the last whispers of steam dying away. Her head was down, and she had gone back to sleep. Peter realised he was still pressed up against the wall, and relaxed. He slowly and quietly left the room, sidling along the wall, not taking his eyes off the little robot in the corner.

Well, that hadn’t gone to plan. He reached the doorway and went to walk away, but stopped, rubbing the back of his neck worriedly. He made up his mind, walked haltingly back into the room, and picked up a piece of paper and a pen from the nearest desk, writing as quickly and quietly as he could. He folded the paper, walked over to Squeaks, still tentative, and placed the folded paper on the desk next to her slumped figure.

_DO NOT DISTURB!!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus I go straight back into exam mode, so this will probably go quiet for a couple of weeks, sorry. The long weekend gave me the chance to storm through a couple of quick chapters!  
> Again, as your friendly neighbourhood scientist, I would like to point you to a short video on the Leidenfrost effect, or its alternative name 'hey, how come that water is floating?'  
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKgnNGqxMw
> 
> I hope you all are enjoying this: it's SO MUCH FUN to write, and will involve the other robots more over time, but for now I've got to help my main character through a traumatic event. I do have a picture somewhere that I doodled of a time Rachel operates Squeaks and finds herself attached to a giant spool of string (back in part 1, Not So Steam Powered)... let me know if you'd like the picture up somewhere. I might do a picture of Squeaks' face, for reference, because I've described her in part 1, but I don't think I've actually given her a physical description here... oops.
> 
> Until next time.


	8. Deactivated: Day 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the thing: just after 'I can't write, I have exams' comes 'oh look, I've got too much spare time' and 7 UNINTERRUPTED HOURS ON A TRAIN travelling on business. So time to play catch-up! I've got another long trip tomorrow, so don't be surprised if you get another chapter.  
> A moment of navel-contemplation, if I may... I never written before joining AOO (a.k.a starting to go a little nuts over the SPG fandom), and the idea for this whole story formed from a basic idea on a bike-ride to work (which I can't tell you, as it isn't in the story yet), so I'm currently enjoying the discovery that the characters lead me where we need to go. For example, I didn't know that Squeaks, being a robot, would be able to make space models in her head until she told me so, or that there's a couple of people I'll be getting involved next chapter who I never thought would be in the story, but they kind of walked up to the back of my mind and coughed politely until I realised they had a part to play in this.

Squeaks still hadn’t woken up. Since she had yelled him down, Peter had walked past her room every day in the hope that something would have changed, but she never moved. She head was still bowed, the note he’d placed by her exactly where he had left it. It had been days.

He should have been taking the opportunity of the unusually quiet Manor to work on his experiments, but concentration evaded him. Squeaks’ words began to bounce around his head, and the longer she did nothing, the more guilty his conscience became. He’d never felt like the bad guy before, and he wanted to make everything better again, but the only way he could do anything to help was to do nothing. His fingers itched to do _something_ ; he existed to build and improve, and now one of the most complicated things he’d created refused to let him help her. How could he fix his mistakes if she wouldn’t let him touch her?

The other automatons had never seemed this complicated. The Spine was perhaps the most stubborn, but he’d never refused upgrades. But Squeaks was the more human, and so much younger. Peter wondered what the others had been like before he was born. He forgot, sometimes, how very old they were.

But with Squeaks, he was stuck. If she stayed powered down, there was nothing he could do. He didn’t know if she ever planned to wake up. Maybe she wanted to rust away in a self-induced coma.

For now, he’d have to wait. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand it.

*****

Squeaks had hoped that she was safe in the solace of her own mind. She had switched off, and didn’t know that she intended to turn back on again, but she soon found out that was impossible.

She kept finding herself waking up, and had to slam herself into unconsciousness again, like holding down a spring-loaded lid. She didn’t understand – surely the whole thing with computers was that when you turned them off they didn’t turn themselves back on again? But her own head seemed to defy her. She found herself bobbing up and down through power cycles, when all she wanted was to sleep. After two days, she gave up and let herself come up into her modelling level, which seemed to be as close to staying powered down as she was capable of sustaining.

For a long time, she just let there be blackness around her. She didn’t want to think or feel; by now she didn’t really want to be here at all, but there didn’t seem to be any way around it. It felt like everything pressed in around her, holding her down and dragging her mind with it. She was trapped. Trapped in the Manor, trapped in this body.

But even sitting in the dark, the tiny ticking of a clock pressed in on her. Every minute seemed to drag on, while she sat, unable to stand the boredom, but unable to bear the thought of leaving her own head. She could have drawn out the universe in her head if she wanted to, but even that had lost the spark. Space was just a different kind of loneliness.

There was one place she could go that she might be able to handle.

She focussed herself on modelling Rachel’s home again, this time making every piece of paper, every box, every paperclip, letting the process burn away the hours of silence. Even when it was ready, she waited, not wanting to bring herself to enter the model. She knew it would hurt – but then, everything hurt now. With a feigned breath, she placed herself in the model, back by the desk in the corner of the study. She’d made it night, this time; the study had small, antique-style lamps on the walls, shedding just enough light that the room felt slightly too dim. The desk was strewn with stray pieces of paper covered in a familiar spider-scrawl handwriting, seeping out over nearby boxes and onto the floor. Squeaks lowered herself to the floor, and stared out of the door into the hallway, now a shadowy darkness. She felt the tears slip over her cheeks, and folded up on the floor, letting emotion pour over her as she descended into heavy sobs.

There was no reason to stop crying. They were oily tears, but they weren’t even real, and no-one would come to comfort her. She could have cried for hours without getting tired, and so she did, curled inward, her head on the ground, fingers raking at her arms. She cried until that became boring too, and then for a while she just lay there, watching the simulated oil seep greasily into the beige carpet.

Eventually she got up, and stood staring blankly at the hallway. She had been lying long enough that dawn should have happened by now, but she didn’t want the sunlight, and so outside the window there was still the murky amber of a city-lit night sky. She walked out of the study, every step a chore, and back into the bathroom. She wanted to feel the coolness of water against her face, which was starting to feel warm from the oil that she’d been crying. She reached for the hanging light switch and pulled it, and the room burst into stark whiteness all around her.

Squeaks bent over the sink, turning on the tap and splashing the water into her face. It cooled her, running off down her chin as it slipped over the waterproof layer of oil on her cheeks, and so with her eyes closed she reached for a towel on the drying rack. She buried her face into it, feeling the courseness against her skin, and rubbed the oil away. The sensation brought a smile to her face, and she glanced in the mirror, which had loaded correctly, this time. What looked back at her froze her in place.

Reflected perfectly in the mirror was the duck-egg blue towel, now smeared with clearish-black oil, clasped in her hands. Straight brown hair was tucked back from… what should have been Rachel’s face, except between her chin and her forehead, there was just a confused pink mass. Squeaks dropped the towel and leaned into the mirror. She felt her eyes widen in horror, but there were no eyes that she could see. She pressed her fingers to her face where she felt a nose, eyes, cheeks, but in the reflection there was simply nothing to see.

_What’s wrong?_ She asked herself, searching the model for flaws. _File not found_ , the model bounced back, as Squeaks began to shake, staring into the blank pink void of her own face.

_It’s my face! How can I not find the file for my own face?!_

_File not found._

_Where are you looking?_ Squeaks stepped away from the mirror no longer wanting to see the face in the mirror.

_Memory files._ Their location was revealed to her – she’d seen it before, when she’d replayed a conversation with Peter not long ago. She shook her head frantically; how could her face not be in the memory files? She knew what she looked like, she had… her eyes were…

She realised she couldn’t remember. It had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember what colour they were, but gave up realising she had no clue. She snarled, and went back into the study, sitting down on the desk chair as she tried to stave off the panic which was starting to set in. What if this meant her fears were true? Was her connection with Rachel starting to fail? Maybe she’d known what Rachel’s face looked like a week ago, but she’d forgotten now. How much else would she forget?

Squeaks closed her eyes and tried to concentrate, opening up the memory files and searching them for faces, any and all she had in her memory. A few came up, and she flitted through them, discarding the robots and Peter, and looking through the rest. A lot of them looked like strangers. The panic began to rise again as she looked past the faces and wondered if she would recognise Rachel’s face at all.

Two memories pulled themselves out from the sea of faces, and Squeaks froze. Only two? Had she forgotten so much already? She pushed herself on, and played the first of the two memories. It unfolded in front of her eyes, and the study disappeared to be replaced with the memory.

Squeaks stood in one of Peter’s labs, staring down at a little woman in a wheelchair. Her hair was brown and straight, falling flat over her shoulders. The woman was staring at the floor, it seemed, but her face was obscured.

Squeaks’ heart sank. This was Rachel, she was sure, but she was wearing the virtual reality set that allowed her to control Squeaks, and it obscured her face. One of only two memories, and in this one her face was hidden. She waited and watched, just in case Rachel removed the goggles. Rachel was smiling, looking down through the goggles. This was the first and only time Rachel met Squeaks. Rachel giggled, and Squeaks copied her. Rachel held out a hand, and in imitation Squeaks leaded forward to touch her. Everything Rachel had done, Squeaks imitated through the kit Peter had made. She gazed at Rachel, knowing it was her, and not her. It made her head spin.

“Well, at least that shows the time delay’s fixed. It’s really nice to meet you, Squeaks,” said Rachel, and Squeaks parroted her like a mirror. _It was nice to meet you too,_ Squeaks thought sadly. This must have been after Peter had set up her blue core; the goggles that were hiding Rachel’s face were the ones Squeaks wore around her neck now, the ones where Peter had hidden blue matter, somewhere. It must have been in this meeting that Rachel’s connection to the core was established.

Rachel started to wriggle oddly in her chair, the action forcing Squeaks to move carefully closer and bend down into a fiddly hug. Squeaks smiled to herself; the experience had been surreal. Rachel had been able to feel what Squeaks touched, and in that hug she’d felt the cold metallic touch of the robot, and also could feel the warm, soft touch of her own torso squeezing back.

It dawned on her that something was odd about the memory, as Squeaks stood back and Rachel fumbled with the metal gloves on her hands in search for the button which severed the connection. In Squeaks’ recent memories, all the thoughts and feelings she had experienced were knitted in with what she saw and heard, but here the memory was, well, clinical. The sights and sounds were there, but there was no sensation, no thoughts whipping through her mind. There wasn’t the joy she could sense in Rachel’s smile.

Rachel pressed the button and Squeaks closed her eyes, her circuits whirring into silence. The memory stopped there, bringing Squeaks back into the study where she had been before. Of the two memories she had, the first was useless for trying to remember what she looked like. She opened the second, silently praying to whoever would listen that she might find something useful.

The memory enveloped her mind as the first had, but it felt very different this time. Where the first had been sharp, exact and cold, this one felt almost blurry, and as it began a wave of warmth swept over her. Her vision was tunnelled, like she was watching the scene unfold through blinkers, but the sight that met Squeaks sent her hopes plummeting through the floor.

She was stood in one of Peter’s labs, gazing down at Rachel as she sat in her wheelchair. It was the same memory, but it was fuzzy, and where the last had been devoid of feeling this was almost swamped in it. Joyful waves lapped up against Squeaks, which felt almost sickly against the despair which clamped itself around her as she tried to understand what this could mean. Why was this memory recorded twice? And why was it so different?

“Well, at least that shows the time delay’s fixed. It’s really nice to meet you, Squeaks,” said Rachel again. In the silent pause which followed her words, a little bubble of disappointment burst in the memory. Squeaks let the emotions wash over her, scared and bemused.

A few minutes later, her head bowed as it had done before, and the room went dark, but the memory didn’t finish. Instead, the darkness gave way to the light of the lab, and Squeaks found herself staring down at her wheelchair. _This is Rachel’s memory_ , Squeaks realised, as she lowered the goggles to her lap and turned to smile at Peter. Squeaks stood before her, slumped over as she did when she powered down. They talked, Peter gesticulating dramatically and Rachel laughing and joking with him. Despite the smile on her face, Squeaks could feel the undertows of sadness that tugged at her as she spoke. She kept glancing over at Squeaks, stood dormant in from of her, as they spoke, and every time she did there was another little shock of something; regret, or sorrow. Squeaks couldn’t filter the thoughts properly to understand what she had been thinking. The emotions rolled over her, but the thoughts which ran them were layered over and over on themselves in a giant matted web, and almost buzzed in her head like a hive of bees. Human thought turned out to be massively complicated, and impossible to read from the outside. Squeaks realised the memory started to grow dim, and Rachel’s voice began to die away as the memory gently faded away. Where the other had finished as if cut off by a knife blade, this one ebbed away like a puff of smoke.

Eventually the study came back, and Squeaks blinked. She had two memories of the same occasion, one from her own receptors and the other from Rachel’s memories. She’d been sure that she had Rachel’s memories, but hadn’t thought of her own being filed away at the same time. But then, if she had Rachel’s memories, why was there nothing in which she looked at her own face? She began searching through, trying to find older memories, but it was difficult. Any memories she could find with a time stamp were relatively recent, nothing older than a few months ago. She separated out the ones with no time stamp on them, and opened one at random. This time she was in a dark room, curled up in a large leather chair, reading a book, breathing little sighs of contentment by the fire; this was one of Rachel’s. The Spine came barrelling in at some point to pull her out of the room as she inadvertently threw a stick of dynamite onto the fireplace. Terror had flooded her system, wrapped tightly in The Spine’s arms as her dragged the door closed behind them and it buckled under the force of the explosion.

Squeaks closed that one, and opened another. She was tearing down a cycle path, the wind ripping through her hair, exhilaration pumping through her. The memory lasted only a few seconds, vanishing away like smoke as the last one had. In another, she was leaning on her elbow in front of a mirror; Squeaks thrilled momentarily before recognising her own silver face in disappointment. It must have been another visit to the Manor. There were no emotions in this one, just a stifling exhaustion, like she hadn’t slept in days.

As she opened more memories, old and new, a pattern began to emerge. Her memories from recent weeks were long and detailed, overlaid with thoughts and timestamps. Rachel’s memories were shorter, flooded with emotion. And there were those in the middle; she found more which seemed to come up twice, one version from Rachel’s memory, another clinical from her own. But she still didn’t find anything where Rachel’s face appeared, and nothing yet more than a few months old. Squeaks began to develop a theory about what might be happening, but if it was true she wasn’t sure she wanted to believe it, though she might not have a choice. She paused, sitting in the study, thinking in the dimly lit room. She needed something more tangible to work with, and so she closed her eyes briefly, working on the model again. When she opened her eyes, the floor was covered in thick brown paper folders, piled up to her knees, and 3 trays were sat neatly on the desk next to her, with a small cardboard box of paperclips and a black marker pen. She bent down to pick up the two files closest to her feet, and opened them both; inside both was a thick pile of papers, stapled together. On the top page of both, the same picture stared back of a young brown haired woman in a wheelchair, but as she watched the pictures began to move, playing out the memory she had been watching a few minutes earlier. The one in her left hand was slightly blurry, and under the one in the left the start-time of the memory was stamped in copperplate letters.

She closed the files, picked a paperclip from the box nearby, and fastened them together, one on top of the other. She wrote the date on the front of the top folder, with the words, ‘Rachel meets Squeaks, Walter Manor, San Diego’, and placed the combined file in the middle of the three trays on the desk. She looked at the rest of the files on the floor; she had no idea how long it would take to look through the memories properly, but didn’t really mind. Now, she could take all the time she wanted to.

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some memory references here to times we've met Rachel before, in part 1 of the Squeaks series. The one which might not make sense on meeting it here is Rachel throwing dynamite on the fire: see, they used to keep the explosives in the kitchen next to the microwave, but The Spine pointed out how dangerous that was so they moved the explosives into the room with the fireplace. Still with me?


	9. Deactivated: Day 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I'd have hours on the train back? Turns out what I meant was 'hours with someone sitting next to me who is apparently more interested in my computer screen than their own book'. Turns out you can't write about a robot-human-robot or a man who wears a slab of wood on his face when there's someone watching you type. I eventually gave up in disgust and pointedly stared out the window.
> 
> Still, there's someone I'd like you to meet.

Peter walked past Squeaks’ room for what must have been the seventh time that day, but there was still no change, except for the slowly gathering layer of dust. He was starting to worry that perhaps she _couldn’t_ wake up, and had begun chasing himself round in circles debating whether or not he should do anything. On the one hand, if something had gone wrong and Squeaks was somehow stuck powered down, she might be trapped in her head and not be able to ask for help. She’d been dormant for about a month before waking up for the first time, and Peter hadn’t managed to go through all her systems properly yet and make sure nothing was rusted or broken. On the other hand, if she meant to stay asleep and he woke her, then… he wasn’t even sure what he would have to face then. Even with her V.O.P. code, he found himself a little scared of her.

He needed someone to talk to about this, and he knew who that someone was. He gave the sleeping robot a last worried look, and headed towards the opposite wing of the Manor.

The Manor was far too large for one man to rattle around in on his own, but it became apparent some time ago that he need his own space, as did other occupants who had outgrown making him dinner every night for umpteen years. This was why Peter’s parents lived in what was probably the largest granny-flat that ever existed.

A couple of years previously, the Walters had reorganised the Manor in such a way that the East Wing was self-contained, and Peter’s mother and father had moved across to enjoy the quiet and their own part of the grounds. That wasn’t to say that Peter never saw them, but it did offer them respite from the antics of the robot band, who obediently, if dejectedly, stayed away from that part of the house. Peter’s father was fond of the robots, but these days he considered himself retired from their energetic way of life.

Peter reached the door to the East Wing*, which was huge, old, and intricately carved with scrollwork and floral patterns. Peter had always thought it looked older than the house, carved from one huge slab of thick wood. Nearby, he had fitted a little doorbell, which he pressed. He heard a few notes of Shakin’ Stevens ‘This Ole House’ play tinnily through the wing, and smiled to himself. His dad always liked that song.

After a minute or so, the door was opened by a little woman in a red dress and slippers. Her hair was dirty blonde, although it was now a little more silver than blonde. The laughter lines around her blue eyes creased into a smile when she saw him.

“Peter, sweetie!” She reached up and wrapped her arms about his neck, pulling him down into an enveloping hug.

He wrapped his spindly arms about her torso and squeezed in response, smiling behind his mask, “Hi mom. Am I OK to drop round for a few minutes? I’m not interrupting?”

“Of course, come on in. But keep your voice down,” she leaned up, speaking in an exaggerated hush, “your father’s fallen asleep in the lounge. We’ll go and have a drink in the kitchen.”

They tiptoed down the hall, passing the lounge on the right as they went; the TV was on and police sirens wailed from it, and sure enough Peter’s father was sitting in a lounge-chair not far away, snoring loudly with his mouth gaping. As they reached the kitchen, a small room with green tiles and copper pans, Peter’s mother began to chatter pleasantly as she bustled around the room putting together a tray of coffee and sweet things. Peter smiled. Small and round as she was, her motherly ways had begun to give way to the granny habit of overfeeding her guests. He sat back in a chair at the kitchen table and relaxed as she brought him up to speed on everything she and his father had been up to since he last saw them. From what she said, it mostly included slowly working through years of storage.

As she pressed a hot mug into Peter’s hand and deposited her little tray of cakes on the table, she sat down next to him and sighed, her own drink clasped in her hand.

“So what prompted this surprise visit?” she asked. “Not that it isn’t lovely to see you, but you don’t often just drop in.”

Peter toyed with his drink.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about something I’ve been working on. It’s all got a little complicated. I think I need to talk it through.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for.” She sipped her drink and nodded at him, “you don’t need to stay on ceremony here, either. Forget the mask, have a cookie.”

Peter didn’t remove his mask around the Manor, but keeping it on tended to bother his mother. He still bore the damage from the blue matter explosion a few years ago. He envied his mother at times like this; back when her husband took care of the robots, he hadn’t worked out sufficient protection against the blue matter he worked with, and her hair was blue for years, but when she’d retired it had started to wear off. Now her silver-blonde hair only had a few faintly blue streaks left. Peter had been careful enough to avoid blue-hair problem; except for the time when he hadn’t. The affects seemed permanent.

Nonetheless, he removed his mask and took a small cake from the tray, which turned out to be lemon cake.

“Have I told you about Squeaks, before?” he asked through a mouthful of crumbs.

“I don’t think so. A pet mouse?”

“A new automaton. But,” Peter thoughtfully took a sip, “she was... sort of an accident.”

His mother’s expression was unreadable for a few moments. “I didn’t think the robots could _have_ ‘accidents’”.

“Not like that, mom,” Peter cut in quickly before she embedded the thought of a pregnant robot too deep in his mind, “I built her.”

Starting from the beginning, Peter explained to his mother how he’d reached his current predicament. How Rachel had been due to come to America from England before a cycling accident broke her legs. How Peter built an empty robot she could use to explore the Manor. How Squeaks woke up one day, her head full of human memories and had quickly become more and more upset, before shutting herself down and refusing to wake up again. As his story went on, his mother’s expression slowly changed from curiosity to one of horror.

“Oh, the poor girl!” she whispered, when Peter finished his story.

“I don’t know what to do now,” he admitted, “she won’t wake up, and I can’t wake her up.”

His mother picked up a cookie, but thought for a moment and put it down with a frown, “I ought to scold you for getting the poor girl in this position in the first place, I suppose. You should have been more _careful_ , Peter.”

“I know. I don’t really know why I wasn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?” her gaze was sharp. He shrugged in return. She sighed and shook her head. “I did raise you, you know. Little accidents tend to happen around here when you get bored.”

“Fine, sure. But what do I do now?”

“I’m not sure. The poor girl’s been plucked clean out of her life, and then when she’s asleep you start messing with her.” She shot him a warning look.

“I was only trying to help!”

“I know, sweetie. But you can’t just go round treating this woman like one of your experiments. How would you like it if you woke up tomorrow and I told you I’d replaced one of your kidneys?”

“Invaded,” Peter mumbled. His neck started to blush, “I really hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Sometimes I think being round the robots so much wasn’t good for you,” his mother said sadly. She stopped to think for a moment, “so she’s unconscious?”

“She’s not powered up. The robots have a few states they can use when they’re not physically interacting, so she could be using one of those.”

His mom nodded. The automatons could power down entirely, which was the closest thing they had to sleep. The other states were useful for upgrading software, among other things.

“I’d bet she’s found the modelling state,” she said slowly.

“She has. How’d you know?”

“I’m trying to imagine what I’d do in her shoes. Your father had a similar problem when he came to the Manor. It’s a wonderful place, but he was taken away from the place he called home. Apparently he asked Wanda for a newspaper every day for weeks until he could find a picture of the orphanage.”

“You think she’s trying to find pictures of home?”

“If she’s got modelling, I’m worried that she’s gone one better and made it in her head.”

“Oh.”

She nodded, stoically, “Peter, this could be a problem. She’s here, away from everyone she knows and loves. She doesn’t really know anyone here, and if she trusted you before then she doesn’t trust you now. If she’s made herself somewhere safe and familiar, it’ll be difficult get her out.”

“You don’t think she’s not just broken? Trying to get out, but she can’t?”

“Not for a moment. Miserable, yes, broken, no.”

“So what can I do?”

Peter’s mother didn’t answer for a moment, instead gazing thoughtfully out of the window.

“I think it depends,” she said slowly, “on whether she’s stayed powered down or she’s started modelling. Didn’t you say she was connected to your computer?”

Peter started, and thumped himself with the heel of his hand, “You’re right; all her storage files are still in my cloud server.” He filed a mental note to change that later, but pulled a phone out of his pocket and hurriedly began looking through it. He breathed a sigh of relief as he reached Squeaks’ files, “She’s active.”

“Can you tell if she’s modelling?”

Peter frowned as he watched the little screen in front of him, “she’s... moving memory files around. Why would she be doing that?”

*****

Squeaks held a file in her hand. She turned it over, and then back again, as if something might have changed.

The trays next to her had slowly filled up, each of them now a little taller than she was, but from the pile of paperwork on the floor she still had a lot to go through. All the files had been the same format so far – a brown file, a thick pile of papers stapled together, with the top page playing images like a movie, and pages and pages of black copperplate zeros and ones which wrote out the recorded memory in binary.

This one was different.

Squeaks opened the file again, and picked out the single sheet of paper inside it. It was blank; one sheet of blank, white paper. It ought not to mean anything, but somehow she knew what it meant.

When she had awoken in the lab, Peter had briefly disconnected the blue core which powered her. She knew it had been brief – time stamps before and after told her it had only been a minute – but she could remember what happened in between.

Nothing. _Nothing_ happened, for a long time. There had been no sight, no sound, no light or dark, just the absence of everything. Squeaks had tried to shout, but it felt like there was nothing to shout with. She’d felt like she had no arms or legs, no body at all. Nothing but the feeling of fear, which slowly pressed in on her until it was all that she could think.

Squeaks shuddered. It wasn’t anything she wanted to experience again.

What almost bothered her more than the memory itself was the nagging question behind it: why did she remember it in the first place?

All her memories, and Rachel’s, were stored digitally, hence the pages upon pages of binary. This one had no storage and no code, but Squeaks remembered it. The only thing to pinpoint it in her own was this blank file, which should mean nothing. But she did remember.

It felt almost it was in her soul. It felt like _instinct_. Something in her remembered and kept this file to tell her that this was a weakness: _do not unplug your core._

She picked up her pen, closed the file and wrote ‘Nothing’ on the front in heavy letters.

Reaching round to sort the file, she paused, looking at the three trays. It didn’t fit any category she had so far. She dropped the file on the desk, and reached down for the next one.

*****

“Moving memory files?”

“Yeah…” said Peter. As he watched, another memory disappeared from its folder. “She’s moving them all into subfolders. Three so far – ‘her’, ‘both’, and ‘me’.”

His mother looked perplexed. “I wonder what she’d be doing that for.”

She shifted her chair round and pulled Peter’s hand down to the table to see the screen on his phone. For a few seconds, they watched the phone expectantly. After a moment, a file appeared nest to the three subfolders.

“‘Nothing’,” Peter read slowly, “what does that mean?”

He lifted his hand to open the file, but his mother gently pulled his arm back from the elbow.

“You’re too curious, Peter. Her memories aren’t yours to look at.”

Peter sighed. She was right. He’d wrecked so much of his trust with Squeaks already. It was difficult not just to think of her as another of his robots. He would have to be more careful. He picked up his phone and pocketed it.

“So what now?”

His mother furrowed her brow in though. “She’s active in there,” she said, “Squeaks has obviously found something to occupy herself. It must be quite therapeutic, sorting through memories like that – a bit like organising your book collection.”

Peter nodded, “So I should leave her to it?”

“For a while. If she’s working through something, she might be able to pull up on her own. If she doesn’t, well,” she cocked her head, “I’ll think for a couple days. See if I can think of a way to bring her back gently. Either way, when she comes back it’s on you to help her, Peter.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, her gaze suddenly stern, “the poor girl doesn’t know us from Adam. You’ve got to let her in. This place has to be home to her. You and the ‘bots have got to show her she’s got friends here.”

*****

*There were very few doors in the Manor. To Peter’s recollection, there were currently 3; the one protecting everyone from the explosives room, the one to the HOW protecting everyone from QWERTY, and this one protecting his extended family from everyone else**.

**He did notice a note taped to the door in his mother’s handwriting, reminding Rabbit gently that she still wasn’t allowed in that part of the Manor, especially not at 3 in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> N'aaw. I like Annie.


	10. Deactivated: Day 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... back to the robot girl who's been an admin assistant for the last few days...

In front of Squeaks, the piles of paper on the floor were now neatly stacked into the three trays on her desk. Some of the brown folders had dark smears – when she’d sorted enough of the files to confirm her theory, she’d begun to cry oily tears again. But she was finished crying, now.

The leftmost tray, marked ‘her’, had the smallest pile. Squeaks had hoped it would be larger. The ‘me’ tray on the right was piled much higher, and every file was at least as thick as her finger. The tray in the middle, ‘both’, was perhaps only as tall as it was because every memory in it was recorded twice, the pairs pinned together with a safety pin. Squeaks glanced again at the single file she’d left next to the trays, that didn’t fit any of the categories, but looked away just as quickly. The memory preyed on her mind – it hadn’t quite left her thoughts since she picked the file up, sitting in the corner of her eye all the time. She picked it up again, opened it, and looked at the white blank page. Just a blank page, a marker for a moment of screaming emptiness.

Squeaks snapped the file shut and threw it back on the table like a hot coal. She’d have to put it out of her mind.

She looked back at the trays, knowing what they meant. Her jaw set, she looked down at her hands, which were coated in oil, but still fleshy.

There was nothing more she could do on her own.

She closed her eyes.

*****

She came to, to the sounds of pistons hissing softly and the now familiar start-up noises in her head, telling her the time and date, the status of all her moving parts, her temperature, and all the other objectionable little noises. But she kept her eyes closed for a moment, telling herself it was alright to be here. _I am Squeaks,_ she thought to herself, _I don’t belong in Rachel’s study. But I can try to belong here._

Just the robotic sounds her body made the panic start to rise in her, but Squeaks was fed up with panicking. She was fed up with the fear of being a robot. With her eyes closed, she searched through her memories for a sound that was always calming, and isolated it: Rachel had played it in her ear every moment.

She lifted her head, parted her lips, and let the sound play. Squeaks took her first synthetic breath.

She took another, and the fear began to ebb away.

As she relaxed, she lifted a hand to the goggles around her neck. Her other hand still rested on the trilby on the table. Her fingers tightened around it, and she lifted it to her head.

Squeaks, now with a sort of stubbornness, opened her eyes.

For the first time after so many days of night-time, she saw morning light through the window. The CCDs in her eyes instantly cut their imaging time so the bright light wouldn’t overwhelm them. She looked down at the table, and picked up a folded sheet of paper. ‘Do not disturb’ was written in Peter’s large, angular hand. Underneath, Rabbit had just written ‘why not? ’. Around the edges were multiple cross- hatches, filled in with zeros and x’s: it looked like as many games of noughts and crosses as Rabbit could fit in before someone dragged her away. Almost despite herself, Squeaks smiled. They might not have disturbed her, but Rabbit seemed to do what she liked.

Squeaks looked up, and huffed at the silhouette in the doorway.

“Don’t you ever leave?”

“I only just arrived,” said Peter. Though his presence annoyed her, Squeaks realised with some satisfaction that Peter was standing just outside the doorway, and he had very carefully positioned himself so that his torso was hidden by the doorframe. With his fingers curling around the edge, it looked like he was holding the wall like a shield, “but I see you’re awake. Are you ok?”

Squeaks was surprised, despite herself. “Oh – well, sort of. I had time to think through a few things. I’ve worked something out, Peter.”

Peter was still wary of her, but he released the doorframe and stood in the archway, knitting his fingers together, “did you want to tell me about it?”

Squeaks sighed. He was almost scared of her. He’d made her so mad before. The time away from his insistent manner had cooled her anger – and she did need someone like him to talk to about what she’d worked out. He would understand the implications, if not how much it hurt her. She took another slow breath.

“You’re breathing,” Peter observed.

“It helps. I’m just playing a recording, but it’s calming, somehow.” Squeaks paused, as she and Peter watched one another guardedly across the room. “I’m not Rachel. I never was.”

“Why d’you think that?”

“I’ve been busy.” Squeaks tightened her hold on her goggles to reassure herself, and took another steadying breath, “while I was powered down, I looked through my memory files. I can play them out like a video.”

Peter nodded silently, waiting for her to continue.

“But my memories don’t all look the same. It didn’t take long to find a pattern. The memories fit into three groups. So I sorted them into those groups so I could see how many were in each group.

“One group has all my most recent memories. They’re the ones which record everything I said, heard, saw or thought, and they have a time stamp so I know exactly when they were. Putting them all together, they cover the entire length of time since I became sentient.” _Except for the Nothing file_ , Squeaks thought to herself, but she dismissed it for now.

“Then there’s another group: it’s hard to describe. The memories are much shorter – some of them are more like flashes. And some of them just felt like pockets of emotion. But any sound or images in them are much less... precise. Where my recent memories record everything around me, these ones might only be a face, or a song. Although there are some really long ones, studying in the office for hours at a time.”

Peter looked thoughtful, “That sounds a lot more like human memory. It only stores what’s important, really.”

Squeaks nodded, “those are Rachel’s memories. The last group is somewhere in between; memories with my sights and sounds, but Rachel’s feelings and thoughts.”

“All from the times she wore your blue matter goggles?” Peter nodded at the goggles around her neck.

“Exactly. You see where I’m going with this.”

“So there can’t be many of those. You weren’t connected for long.”

“Right.”

Peter then asked the question Squeaks had carefully avoided, “So how many of Rachel’s memories do you have?”

Squeaks paused, wondering how best to explain.

“I went looking through the memories because I found out that I don’t know what Rachel looks like,” she said, and her gaze dropped to the floor. “I went looking for familiar faces. I found you, and the others, but after that I didn’t recognise anyone. There are faces in my head which must be Rachel’s friends and family, but I don’t know who they are.

“There’s no time reference in her memories, but they’re all so brief anyway.”

“How many of them,” Peter pressed gently.

Squeaks eyes began to well up with oil, and she blinked them away. “Hardly any,” she whispered, “I think they’re flashbacks. Any time Rachel remembered something about her life while she was connected to me, it’s stored in my head. I thought I was her before, but I wasn’t. I have no idea who she is.”

She thought she’d been done crying, but as she heard the words out loud her voice began to scratch and her vision blurred, and she descended into miserable sobs. Peter said nothing, but crossed the room to her and put his arms around her. He said nothing for a long time, just letting her sob with her face buried into his lab coat, her tears seeping into the material with stains that she knew wouldn’t would coming out. She cried anyway, out of fear and pain and loss, and acceptance of who she was.

She cried until her temperature sensors complained about the heat and her face began to steam, then she pulled away from Peter, still making ugly glugging noises amid a cloud of steam. Crying seemed to fry out her voice box, and apparently that resulted in a liberal application of oil. With her voice box hot from the noise, and gurgling as the excess oil drained away, her face and hands coated with more oil and her head enveloped in steam, Squeaks felt a miserable mess.“

"You’re awake!” came a voice from the doorway. Squeaks looked up through blurry vision to see Hatchworth, his head cocked on one side as he looked at her through the doorway. As his eyes caught hers, his face fell, “oh no, Peter, she’s crying.”

“I’m well aware of that, Hatchy,” Peter said gently, a supportive hand still hovering over Squeaks’ shoulders, “I was comforting her.”

“Well you’re not doing a very good job.” Hatchworth wandered into the room, extending his arms to Squeaks, “I can tell because she’s still crying.”

“Hatchworth!” Squeaks gasped, a gurgle of pain marking her voice’s complaint at being used. Her voice was still slightly muffled from the oil, “Peter was doing fine. I’m just… I’m very upset.”

Hatchworth nodded as in understanding, but there was no stopping his path, and soon he had gently removed Peter from Squeaks and wrapped her up in a bear hug, patting her on the back and making little shushing sounds. It occurred to Squeaks that Hatchworth was much taller than she’d given him credit for, and he had to bend down quite far for his arms to be anywhere near here.

“Don’t you worry,” he said softly, “you’re safe now. Hatchdog will keep you safe from the badgers.”

Squeaks, still with a face gushing steam, threw Peter a look which translated roughly as _what the hell is going on now?_ as sorrow and self-pity were forced to give way to bemusement. She wriggled her way out of Hatchworth’s grasp and looked up at him, his face full of gentle concern.

“Thank you, Hatchworth,” she said slowly, “but I’m not – I’m just -”

Lost for words, she took a breath and started again, “Hatchworth, what _badgers?_ ”

“Oh, never mind them,” he said pleasantly, “but it stopped you crying, didn’t it?”

Squeaks, despite herself, laughed aloud for the first time in weeks.

*****


	11. My kingdom for a face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice as it is in Squeaks' head, it's good to get back into the Manor. Another shortish chapter: I tend to post these as I write them, so their length is pretty proportional to how much spare time I have.

Hatchworth wandered off again after that and, having calmed down a little, Squeaks and Peter talked. There was enough to be said, and even more to sort. Peter explained that some of Squeaks’ processing power, and her memories, were in his computer, and that at some point she would need to power down so he could move them so Squeaks wasn’t reliant on a remote connection – and, he added, couldn’t break his computer if she got too upset. Squeaks was glad he had got the point. He would explain to her when she needed upgrades now, and wait for her approval before he got on with it.

Eventually, he asked her if there were any improvements she would need.

“My face,” Squeaks answered, almost without a pause, “it’s really uncomfortable not being able to move it properly.”

Her face, like the rest of her, was entirely metal. Two large silver plates made up her forehead and cheeks, and her jaw was a bar that extended from hinges by her ears, moving under the power of two pistons which showed through the gaps where her teeth would have been. It meant her only moving part was her jaw; she couldn’t smile or frown, or even raise her eyebrows, because she didn’t have any.

Peter nodded, “I get that. It’s a little creepy watching you talk, sometimes. It’s hard to tell whether you’re angry with me or not.”

“For future reference, if you’re not sure, I’m probably angry with you. So can you fix it?”

“Of course. It just depends how you want to do it. Hatchworth’s got a lot more interlinking parts than you, so he can manage fairly complex expressions. The Spine and Rabbit both use impossium – a fully flexible metallic membrane.”

“How is it the same material? Rabbit is white and The Spine is silver.”

“Pure impossium forms an oxidised surface, which is white. The Spine wasn’t a fan of the color, so his is a titanium alloy, which shows up silver but is still pretty flexible.”

Images began to flit through Squeaks’ mind, part of which was operating in a computer a few metres away, of all the metals she knew which formed a white surface. Everything that came to mind was soft, stored in very small quantities and exploded instantly in contact with water.

“How reactive is impossium, exactly?”

“The white layer renders it inert,” Peter answered quickly, “trust me, if it didn’t Rabbit would’ve blown up ten times over by now.”

Squeaks paused to think, picturing Rabbit. She liked Rabbit’s face; it was open and gentle, but her mismatched smoky eyes added a sultry hint. The white metal looked soft, almost skin-like. The little human voice in the back of Squeaks’ head rather missed having skin. It occurred to her, as The Spine’s image crossed her mind, green eyes smouldering, that she rather liked his face too, albeit for different reasons. There was a faint hiss as her cooling system settled her heated faceplates.

“Why doesn’t The Spine like me?” she asked abruptly, surprising herself in the process. His eyes were still burning in the back of her mind.

Peter looked surprised. “What gives you that idea?”

“He just... I don’t really know. But I’ve played through my memory files when he was talking to Rachel. He seemed to like her and he just-” she hesitated, trying to put her finger on it, “since I became, well, _me_ , he never looks all that pleased to see me.” Her shoulders slumped a little with the thought. Squeaks liked everyone at the Manor, especially The Spine, even if the sight of him did send prickles down her neck. She couldn’t work out what she must have done to upset him.

“I’m sure that’s not true. Spine’s not the type to do that.”

“Even when I was first powered up. You remember we tried to get him to help me power down? He was angry with me!”

“Oh!” Peter shook his head, “No, he was angry with _me_.”

“What?”

Peter tapped his wooden mask, “When this happened, the robots didn’t let me work with blue matter for a long time. Not until I made a radiation suit and proved it could withstand explosions. The others are very protective of me now. The Spine wasn’t happy that I’d been working on blue matter behind his back.”

“So why do it behind his back? Why not just tell him what you were doing?”

Peter threw his hands up in exasperation, “Because I’m thirty-one. I’m too old to have someone breathing down my neck.”

“Did you wear the suit when you installed the core?”

Peter paused for slightly too long. Squeaks rolled her eyes, “Well, then I’m not surprised that he worries. Did he say that’s why he was mad?”

“Yeah. He got into a real mood that day. I knew he wasn’t being himself because he-” Peter broke off mid-sentence.

“Because he what?”

Peter didn’t answer for a moment, looking very much like he’d said something he shouldn’t.

“What did he do?” Squeaks pressed.

“There’s no point in telling you,” Peter decided aloud, “he didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, well, now you _have_ to tell me!”

“No, I really don’t. So do you want to try the impossium?”

Peter’s change of subject was abrupt, and Squeaks wasn’t sure whether to worry or be grateful. The Spine had done or said something about her, obviously, and whatever it was, it was unkind enough that Peter wouldn’t tell her. Maybe her worries about The Spine weren’t entirely unfounded.

“How long would it take to make?”

“Not long. I’d have to make you a face mold, but after that I just pour the metal in. That’s so easy Rabbit makes her own, now – every few days, when she feels like it.”

“Do you just make them in white and silver?”

“No, you can mix it with just about anything, if you want. Pick a color.”

“I’ll start with white. Like you said, once the mould is made I can change it up if I want to, right?”

Peter nodded, “Whenever you like. Alright, one new face. Anything else?”

Squeaks lifted her hands, spreading out her fingers in front of her face, “Less pointy hands? I keep scratching my face.”

“Less of a problem with impossium. I could give you impossium hands as well, but the others tend to just wear gloves. Next?”

“Legs. Or at least some disabled ramps.”

Peter looked down at Squeaks’ wheel-limb, “yeah, OK. Legs will take a while; they’re a whole new design and I’d have to get the balance right. But in the meantime I can put some ramps in so you can get around. Although that won’t stop Hatchworth sliding down the banister. Thanks for that, by the way.”

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, Spine, what did we do to upset you? :(
> 
> As an aside, I can't remember if I've mentioned in Part 2 that Squeaks is British. Therefore I try to keep the distinctions between how everyone speaks depending on the words they know: for Peter, "color", for Squeaks, "colour". In case you thought I was putting typos everywhere.


	12. Lend a hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for...robot injury, I guess? I'm not sure how to manage triggers without spoiling the story!  
> As ever, thanks for coming along for the ride :) Like and subscribe for more like thi- no, what, that's YouTube. Leave me a comment if you're enjoying the story! It does give me a happy boost when I get comments, I'm still fairly new to the Archive world. I like it here, though.

Squeaks tentatively left the room after that, and it took a suspiciously short time for her to bump into Rabbit, who was stood in the next hallway looking nonchalant*. She looked up and smiled as Squeaks rolled around the corner, and wafted vaguely at a stray plume of steam which hissed from her cheeks.

“You’re awake again,” she said with a grin, “I was startin’ to think you didn’t want to be here.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But it takes getting used to being, well, stuck here. Not to say that I don’t like hanging around - ” she added abruptly as Rabbit proceeded to look put out, “- it just wasn’t something I signed up for.”

Rabbit shrugged amiably.

“So waddaya want to do n-now?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Mmm. Wanna play leapfrog?”

“Rabbit, you’re twice my height and I don’t have legs.”

“Oh, right. We could play in the snow?”

“Isn’t it Summer?”

“Well if you’re gonna be picky.”

Rabbit looked thoughtful for a moment, “We should go and find Spine. He’s good at ideas.”

Two conflicting thoughts collided in Squeaks mind. On the one hand, she liked the idea of having an excuse to see The Spine. On the other, her conversation with Peter loomed in her mind; The Spine didn’t like her, and she had a sneaking suspicion he’d said something to Peter that he didn’t want her to hear. The conflict sent a hiss of steam rolling up her cheeks.

“Let’s,” she said anyway, “where do you think he’d be?”

“Our best bet’s the HOW. T-that’s usually where he is.”

With that, Rabbit turned and started walking her way toward the HOW, with Squeaks in tow. Rabbit started telling her about a Mr Potato Head she’d found in the grounds, but Squeaks was distracted. The Spine’s face kept popping up behind her eyes, and she tried to think what it was about him that made her feel unwanted. Why did she feel unliked? He wasn’t excluding her, he wasn’t rude, he wasn’t even unfriendly; he was kind and helpful. He’d even carried her up the stairs when she was stranded at the bottom.

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts as Rabbit chattered in the background that she almost didn’t notice when Rabbit diverted her with a nudge to the shoulder, and she found herself rolling in through the open doorway of the HOW.

Hatchworth and The Spine were stood at the console, talking amiably with QWERTY. They wouldn’t have noticed that Squeaks had arrived had she not stopped suddenly in her surprise, her wheel tires making an apologetic squeal against the floor. As The Spine looked up and saw her, the reason she’d been feeling uneasy around him clicked into place.

For the first time since she’d become sentient, The Spine looked at her and smiled. It lit up his face, and his eyes glowed. She had grown used to him looking at her sternly, but when he smiled even his eyes seemed to change colour, shining a warm emerald rather than the cold, ice-green that had stared her down.

“Afternoon Squeaks,” he said brightly, tipping his hat, “Hatchy said you’d woken up.”

Squeaks nodded silently, rendered temporarily speechless. The perfect gleaming smile that greeted her was significantly more disarming than being glowered at from across the room. A huff of steam punctured the pause as her face started to heat up, and Squeaks opted for a little wave of her hand. Hatchworth looked on silently, his head cocked to one side.

Rabbit burst through the quiet by leaning on Squeaks’ head with her elbow and wafting stray steam with her free hand.

“We’re bored, Spine. Give us something to do.”

“How about a walk in the grounds? It’s a beautiful day.”

Rabbit moaned that walks were boring and pointless, but found herself ignored by Hatchworth and Spine.

“Well I think it’s a lovely idea,” said Hatchworth, walking towards the door, “Squeaks hasn’t seen the grounds yet, and we get to carry her over the rocks.”

“Thanks for volunteering, Hatchy,” The Spine quipped with a smile. He glanced in Squeaks’ direction as they walked, and quickly added, “no offence, Squeaks. Just you’re heavy, is all.”

“I think she’s supposed to be offended by that.”

The Spine proceeded to at least look embarrassed.

The group fell into step** down the corridor, and Squeaks eventually reclaimed her voice, “So... besides going for long walks, what do you do around here all day?”

“Leapfrog.”

“Maintenance.”

“Hide and go seak.”

“Singin’.”

“Painting.”

“Calculus.”

“N-nerd.”

“ _You’re_ a nerd.”

“So you don’t... run out of stuff to do?”

The Spine threw her a sidelong smile, “Squeaks, when you’ve been around as long as we have-”

“-and that’s a _real_ long time-” Rabbit interjected.

“-then you’ll find that life can be a whole lot more fun for taking the time for a good book or a game of leapfrog.”

There was a pause, and the robots looked reflective.

“Or a nice oil change,” added Hatchworth.

“And a moonpie,” said Rabbit, dreamily.

*****

A week later, Squeaks was wandering the corridors, looking into every room she passed. She’d changed out of the oil-stained hand-me-down labcoat she’d worn for the first couple of days, in favour of a black, long sleeved silk blouse that she’d borrowed from Rabbit, and a pair of denim jeans that she’d ripped the seams of and sewn into one long tube she could wear over her wheel-limb. Her blouse buttoned around the neck and had old-fashioned bell-sleeves with narrow cuffs, and from the worn fabric and the smell of dust when Rabbit had lent it to her, it was very old. She also donned the hat Rabbit had given her, wearing it low over her eyes and hoping it made her look mysterious.

The robots weren’t as good at hide-and-seek as they thought they were. They had the advantage of knowing the Manor back to front, but they were almost childlike in their carelessness. If Rabbit hid behind a curtain, her feet would stick out from underneath. Hatchworth had a habit of hiding in dark rooms, forgetting that his eyes lit up the place like a blue beacon. The Spine was actually pretty good, but he would leave a trail of misplaced items leading to his hiding place.

This time, though, they seemed to have outdone themselves. Squeaks had searched methodically through two floors, and not found any of them yet.

She reached the top of a staircase, and rolled her way down the wooden panels than Peter had put down on staircases all around the Manor while he worked on a more permanent solution to her lack of legs. If he was going to make her a pair of legs, he had reassured her, he wanted to take the time to do it properly. He’d built her in three weeks, but it had been a rushed job, and he was now happily occupied with fixing everything he’d left unfinished. Even her mind, apparently, wasn’t entirely stored in her body. All her memory storage was in Peter’s computer, meaning that if her WiFi were to go down, she might not be able to access them, and would be memoryless until it was restored. While he worked on building her a new face, Peter was also sorting a local memory storage that he could fit as soon as possible.

There were no doorways coming off from the bottom of the stairs, unusually, but a dead end that turned Squeaks around to follow the corridor in the other direction. As she passed another stairwell, however, she paused, and turned to look.

The rectangular hole in the floor was the same size and shape as would normally be used for a straight staircase, with a wooden bannister guarding off the hole, but the staircase that led down wasn’t straight, but a spiral. The steps were old grey stone, worn down over the years, and the walls formed a tight stone column, much like would be found in an old castle; but where a castle would have groves in the walls from years of swords being sharpened on them, here there were the telltale chip marks and slices of the robots grabbing the walls slightly too exuberantly.

Crucially, the steps were too step for Squeaks. She listened for a moment, and heard a hushed giggle.

“Very funny guys,” she called, “pick the one place in the building I can’t get to.”

“You can’t seek us if you can’t reach us,” came Hatchworth’s voice from the floor below. The words bounced around the solid walls.

Peter had tried to give Squeaks access to everywhere in the Manor, throwing in his own brand of odd solutions where the obvious wasn’t possible. Squeaks looked at the thick rope he’d hung from the ceiling, which descended into the hole below, which was dark, but glowed slightly blue and green.

“Challenge accepted,” Squeaks muttered to herself. She’d become more used to manoeuvrers like this, so didn’t bother to run the simulations in her head which would perform the gymnastics she needed, but giving herself a little run up, she vaulted the balcony and reached out for the rope.

She should, she realised as she just missed the rope, have run the simulation.

She plunged into the darkness below, her arms swinging wildly out in front of her, and three pairs of glowing eyes widened and dodged out of the way as she hit the ground, hard and loud.

Squeaks found herself lying face-down on the stone, and rolled herself over so she could sit upright with a groan. The others were stood nearby, and moved as one to crouch down with her.

“I think you missed,” said Hatchworth.

“Are you OK?” The Spine looked concerned, eyes darting between hers as he checked for any signed of distress, “You took a hell of a fall, there.”

“I feel fine,” Squeaks answered, but lifted a hand to her face to check for scratches. Her jeans had torn in the impact, exposing the metal underneath, “Do I look OK?”

“Your face is a bit bent. Your hand looks worse,” Hatchworth nodded at the hand at her side. As she lifted it up, there was a sharp intake of breath from Rabbit’s bellows, and The Spine grimaced. Squeaks must have broken her fall with her arm, by the look of her hand. The metal plating on her wrist was bent sharply backwards, and several delicate metal pins and wires underneath had snapped, some of the wires sparking and popping occasionally. With the impact on her wrist, her hand was pointed grimly back towards her elbow. Her index finger was ticking rhythmically, while the little finger hung uselessly from a wire, making small tinny sounds as it bounced against her wrist. She tried to move her fingers, and found only her ring finger responded. It took her a moment to notice the mental beep warning her that there were signal failures to her hand.

“That looks painful,” she said lamely, as they all stared at her hand, “Why isn’t this painful?”

“We don’t have pain receptors,” Hatchworth answered pleasantly, and he knelt forward to take her hand in his and carefully look it over, tidying and realigning anything he was able. Squeaks felt remarkably unshaken, but still stared at her broken hand in bemusement. It simply didn’t hurt. There were warning signals in her brain, but they weren’t pain signals. They were merely informative. She listened through the error messages, checking whether there was anything more serious, but her hand was the major worry. The only other damage was cosmetic.

Rabbit and The Spine had gone suddenly quiet while Hatchworth investigated the extent of the damage, and Squeaks glanced up at them. She’d started to pick up on little things the robots did, and this was one of the more annoying ones. When the robots stopped talking aloud, there was usually another conversation going on over the WiFi that she couldn’t hear.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she muttered.

“Do-do what?” Rabbit looked up, darting a sideways look at The Spine.

“Message each other. If you’re talking, I want to hear. Humans can’t whisper without other people hearing.”

“Don’t humans just use texts instead? Or the facebook?” The Spine asked. While Hatchworth was working with her wrist and Rabbit was looking on with concern, The Spine was starting to turn his head away to avoid looking at it.

“Well… yes, but not in public. Taking out your phone to message someone is rude. Messaging your sister in front of me is the same. It makes me feel left out.”

Squeaks had found herself explaining little things like this now and then. Even if she wasn’t actually as human as she’d first thought, she still felt like it, and found herself defending human customs to the others.

“So what now?” Squeaks asked, changing the subject.

“Well, you found us. We should probably take you up to Peter for repairs. You’re OK to stand?” The Spine stood up, and held out his arm for her good hand.

Squeaks nodded, and taking Spine’s hand with her other arm over Hatchworth’s shoulder, together they lifted her into a standing position. After losing a game of rock-paper-scissors, The Spine bent down to pick Squeaks up and carry her up the staircase. As he scooped her up, Rabbit picked up Squeaks’ trilby and put it back on her head. Rabbit offered her a wide grin, and one by one they ascended the spiral steps.

 _Would you rather I messaged you?_ The Spine’s voice arrived in her head, warm and soft.

Squeaks looked up at him, but his gaze was focussed on the steps above. He smiled instead, staring upwards.

 _Probably_ , Squeaks messaged back, taking a slow, simulated breath before her face began to steam, _but not in conversation. It’s still rude._

 _We never noticed. There are some conversations you don’t want to have out loud. It’s more efficient than having to wait and say something later_.

Squeaks returned the smile. As much as there were human things she could explain to the robots, there were robot things they explained to her.

_I guess. But what were you talking about that I couldn’t hear?_

The Spine’s smile faltered, slightly. _It’s not really important. I thought you might get upset if we talked about your injuries out loud._

_Hatchworth was pulling wires out of it. That wasn’t bothering me._

The Spine sent something equivalent to a mental shrug. _So I was wrong. Don’t hold it against me, will you?_

*****

*and not at all like Hatchworth had tipped her off that Squeaks was awake again, sending her running through the house and ducking round a corner when she saw Squeaks rolling toward her. She was still venting steam with the exertion, but leaned casually against the wall gazing intently at her gloved hands.

**and wheel

*****


	13. Makeover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a busy month. But this is also a long chapter - not going to lie, I cosplay as this particular fanbot and intend to do so at this year's Asylum, so wanted to make sure this chapter was complete and that Squeaks has her new look before wearing it. If there's anyone from the UK reading this, keep a look out for the Little Lady ;)
> 
> Enjoy; quite a gentle chapter. Just spending time enjoying Peter and Squeaks company, if I'm honest, and making sure she has working arms. 
> 
> Also now I'm timestamping commentary because I've realised that Archive doesn't keep submission dates, so it can be very difficult to tell how long fanfickers have been going for. 
> 
> TLL xx 31/7/17

“Hey, Peter.”

Squeaks found Peter in the kitchen, his head hidden behind the open door of the fridge. When she spoke he jumped, and there was a rustling before he closed the door, his wooden mask slightly askew and a sandwich in his hand. There was a corner missing, and teeth marks.

“Hphy Thweekph,” he swallowed, and tried again, “hey Squeaks. Caught me snacking.”

“Evidently. I was just looking for you.”

Peter looked up at the robots who had followed her into the room, “and you brought the whole gang, I see. Spine, I’ve seen that look before. What did you do?”

Squeaks took a cursory glance over her shoulder at the tall robot behind her. He looked mostly like his gentle, stoic self, but he was carefully avoiding Peter’s gaze. Squeaks turned back to Peter and raised her shattered hand, which fizzed dramatically.

Peter sighed, glanced at his sandwich and tossed it idly on the table, leaving little streaks of peanut butter and jam. “How did that happen?”

“Short answer, I fell down a stairwell.”

“Long answer,” added Hatchworth with a certain modicum of pleasure, “we were playing hide and go seek and Squeaks couldn’t get down the stairs so she jumped over the railing. It was The Spine’s idea.”

Peter crossed his arms and leaned on the fridge, while a metal clunk behind Squeaks implied that The Spine had just hit Hatchworth round the back of the head.

“Don’t hit your brother,” Peter said, but without conviction, “well, I was going to call you to the lab anyway. Who wants to see Squeaks’ new face?”

***

Squeaks had never travelled through the Manor so fast; Rabbit was so excited that she practically dragged her all the way up to the labs.

Peter took a look at her hand first, muttering to himself. Squeaks wasn’t on the metal worktop, this time, and they were in a different room to the ones she was used to. This one had white walls and cupboards, and Squeaks sat back in a dull pink leather chair much like a dentist’s, her hand sticking up awkwardly from the armrest. The robots stood to one side, like so many excited tin cans.

“Well we can’t just bend it back, but I’ve seen worse,” he said eventually, leaning back into a squeaky desk chair, “I think this would be one for the Workers.”

He pressed a neon blue button on the desk that had remained unnoticed before now, and returned to working on Squeaks arm as a cheery little tune began playing from somewhere.

As the room became quiet again, Squeaks looked up at Rabbit.

“Why didn’t The Spine follow us in here?” she asked, faintly aware of a strange, faintly tingly, sensation in her arm. When they’d reached the laboratory, The Spine simply hadn’t followed them into the room.

“He stopped liking watching operations a while back. It makes him squeamish,” answered Rabbit, who had been gently bouncing up and down in anticipation of Squeaks having her new face installed. Peter had given up asking her to stop.

“I never took him for the squeamish type. It’s just metal parts, surely?”

Hatchworth shrugged, “you get attached to your limbs.”

A little while later, the tingling in her arm was replaced by an absence of feeling which coincided with the gentle thud of her battered forearm dropping onto the cushioned arm of the chair as Peter finished removing it. Squeaks looked down and lifted the half that remained, and let out a sigh.

“Just a reminder, Peter,” she said steadily, “to give me some warning before doing something like that.”

Peter picked up the disembodied limb and stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Squeaks’ shortened arm, which she waved pointedly. She suspected it would still take him a while to remember that she didn’t want to be treated like a robot, although having her arm removed hadn’t distressed her nearly as much as she expected.

“Right,” he put the limb down on the table behind him, “I should probably explain what I’m doing, shouldn’t I?

“Your arm needs to be fixed. We’ve got the parts spare, so repairing it shouldn’t take long, but I’d like to give you your face before Rabbit bounces her way through the floor-” he said, pointedly nodding in her direction “- so it’ll be easier to get someone else to look at your arm while I work on your face.”

On cue, a face appeared around the door frame, and Peter looked up.

The young woman walked into the room, smiling pleasantly at Squeaks, her eyes quickly dropping to the stump of her arm and darting to the mangled limb on the table behind Peter.

Squeaks found herself staring up at her. She was pretty, maybe a couple of years older than Squeaks felt she would be, if she weren’t technically only a few weeks old. She was slight, but looked strong for her build, although it was difficult to tell under her outfit, a white lab coat with a petticoat skirt, strong boots and knee-high socks. Her face was round, with a welcoming smile and large, dark eyes. Her hair was cropped short and held out of the way by a pair of goggles propped on her head, not unlike the ones around Squeaks’ neck. She found herself folding her fingers around the strap on her neck.

More startlingly, the woman’s skin was incredibly pale, with a bluish tinge which matched the deep blue of her hair.

She reached behind Peter and picked up the arm, waving it at Squeaks, “let me guess. You’d like a manicure.”

“Squeaks,” Peter stepped in, “This is Chelsea, one of our Walter Workers. Chelsea, Squeaks.” He gestured appropriately between the two parties.

Squeaks glanced at the others in the room, but from their expressions Chelsea’s complexion was nothing new. But then nothing was particularly normal about the Manor. She waved at Chelsea.

Peter explained the incident with the arm, but there was very little to explain; the arm needed repair, and the blueprints were easily available. In a few moments Chelsea had left, taking the arm with her and promising to return as soon as she could manage.

“So,” Peter swivelled in his chair, and wheeled his way to a box in the corner, “let’s get to your upgrades.”

There was a high pitched sound from Rabbit that Squeaks couldn’t analyse as being from her voice box or her continually moving joints. Squeaks watched as a number of items came out of the box in the corner; wires, clippers, discs, a memory stick, and then a book-sized piece of dark packing foam, insulated wires protruding from a division in the centre. First, Peter picked up the memory stick and brought it back to Squeaks’ chair.

“So this one’s up to you,” he brandished the little plastic stick, “this is the patch that allows you to use and recognise the new facial movements. Would you like to use the coma code and I’ll wake you up when you’re fully installed, or would you prefer to stay awake? Either’s fine with me, as long as you don’t move.”

Squeaks thought for a moment. “What are you planning to do?”

“I’ll need to install the patch, and attach all the input and output wires that the face connects to. I don’t need to remove the plates you already have, the new one fits on top of those. But the connectors are in your head – I’ll need to dig around a little to reach everything.

Squeaks had a momentary vision of Peter, inches from her face, breathing loudly and prodding her with errant wires, which sounded the exact opposite of an enjoyable time.

“Put me under,” she shrugged, and Peter reached for the appropriate memory stick as she prepared to sleep.

She heard Hatchworth bid her a good night as she slipped out of consciousness, and then there was quiet, bar for the tiny click as Peter plugged the coma code into the back of her neck.

***

It was almost second nature now to slip into her modelling space. She hung in the darkness, unsure where she wanted to be; somewhere distant, perhaps, and quiet. Nothing so grand and powerful as a supernova.

She let herself materialise in a little patch of darkness not far from Jupiter, or at least close enough that it looked about the size of a golf ball. From here it lit up under the sun, the other planets far enough that they were indistinguishable from the stars; Earth was over her shoulder, only a bluish dot of light.

Squeaks floated easily through the black, letting herself settle into distant orbit around the planet. She looked down and saw her familiar, human legs.

Still human. She kicked her feet, pretending to swim against the current.

Against the blackness, she could see the gentle blips and flashes as the code for her new face downloaded into her mind. She could feel it happening; it felt warm, and slightly fuzzy in her mind, like something prickly over her head. It was calming, although she felt building bubbles of excitement at what awaited her when she awakened. She would have a face she could move again, and this was at her request at last. No more waking up with unrequited upgrades.

She raised her arm – the one which in the waking world had just been cut off at the elbow – and lazily tested the space above her, feeling the familiar resistance of the coma code in action. Not ready yet, of course. She’d only just got here.

She stayed that way for a while, floating on her back around Jupiter, occasionally lifting a hand to test for the presence of the glass ceiling. It was two hours later that the coma was removed, and she felt the resistance burst about her open palm into nothingness. Squeaks smiled to herself, and remembered the feel of her cheeks. She hoped the new smile felt as good.

***

When Squeaks opened her eyes again, they settled on two points of green light, around which the world formed to produce The Spine. He must have joined them in the room while Squeaks was asleep, and at the moment was watching her with apprehension. Without thinking, she smiled reassuringly back at him, and all at once his mask broke in relief, his eyes shining. Rabbit let loose a little squealing noise.

It had been so automatic and so easy that Squeaks hadn’t thought about it, and only now slowly raised her remaining hand to touch her face, lightly putting her forefinger against her cheek as if she was afraid to touch it. The new material gave slightly under her touch. It felt smooth, and a little warm – she opened her jaw experimentally and felt it stretch under her fingers, all the time vibrating very gently.

Peter broke the excited silence that had slowly built as everyone watched Squeaks, “Does it feel OK?”

Squeaks looked up at him with a grin, “it feels amazing, Peter! Could you hand me a mirror?”

Almost before she’d finished speaking, Hatchworth was holding a mirror up to her face with a ram rod straight arm.

Her eyes were wide with wonder. The eyes were the same as they had been, two cameras covered by painted blue eyes.

The face surrounding them was now white. It was one solid piece, going from her forehead to her chin and over both cheeks. She turned her head to look; it didn’t extend all the way to the corners of her jaw, and so the edges of her face were still silver.

“Your old face is underneath,” Peter explained, “this one’s kind of stuck on top. Makes it easier to replace if you want to.”

Squeaks turned back to at herself, and slowly took the mirror from Hatchworth with her remaining arm. Features which had been hard to pick out in metal components were now clear in her new impossium skin. Her face was rounded and youthful, with a button nose and a small mouth. Her eyes looked bigger in their new setting. She looked closer at the impossium layer; it was white, shiny and slightly translucent, and faintly bluish. When she twisted her head, small silver hexagons caught the light under the metallic skin, ingrained in the impossium network. She smiled, and her face lit up. She frowned, and painted blue eyebrows furrowed. Her lips were painted a soft pink. She pouted experimentally.

“This is awesome,” she said finally, putting the mirror down. She grinned at everyone, and they grinned back. She had forgotten how easy it was to just _smile_. “Thank you. Really.”

“If I’m honest, it’s worth it just to be able to tell if you’re actually mad at me without waiting for your head to steam up,” Peter answered, waving her off. He nodded to the desk, where a familiar, freshly repaired, metallic arm had reappeared, “that arrived, by the way. Do you want it reattaching?”

Squeaks nodded, and held out the stub of her arm for him to work on putting her hand back on. Peter bent over it studiously, and for a while he worked in silence while Squeaks admired his handiwork in the mirror and practiced pulling faces at the robots in the corner. Rabbit, it turned out, gurned with the best of them, while The Spine lowered his head in disapproval – though Squeaks was nearly sure she could see him smirking at his sister under his hat.

A little while later, Squeaks found herself staring off into space, and realised the space was occupied by the door frame. She thought of the woman who had gone to repair her arm – Chelsea, Peter had said.

“Chelsea,” she said, slowly, “she seemed nice.”

“She is.”

“Worked here long?”

“A few years.”

Squeaks paused. “And the...”

She gestured her hand around her face.

Peter glanced up before returning to his work, “oh, that. It’s the blue matter. Turns your blood blue. All our new workers get the physical effects.”

“Chelsea wasn’t blue.”

“The blood cells turn blue, not the skin.” He passed a tiny screwdriver to his left hand to lift his right hand for Squeaks, “humans have red blood, normally, but our skin isn’t red, it’s pink.”

He picked up the screwdriver again, and it was quiet for another minute. Squeaks voiced what had worried her before.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Blue matter is, yes. Or these guys wouldn’t get so mad when I use it,” he nodded at the robots. Rabbit stuck her tongue out. “But it doesn’t seem to have any effect on human mortality or morbidity. Just makes you look a bit odd.”

“It’s permanent?”

“Nope. Blood vessels regenerate normally as soon as you’re not around the stuff, and the hair grows normally too. So you’re back to normal in a couple of years.”

“So why aren’t _you_ blue?”

“I think it’s a kind of genetic immunity. Colonel Walter – my several-greats grandfather – he did have all the side effects. But his sons didn’t get them as badly, and the same with the next generation, and so on until you get to me. Blue matter doesn’t seem to affect me,” he paused in his work, head cocked to one side, “apart from the whole face thing. But I’m not sure that counts.”

Squeaks looked up at the others, who all looked suddenly sombre. It was an expression she was used to on The Spine, but not on the others. Hatchworth was stoney faced. It occurred to her how young and terribly mortal Peter must seem to them, and how worried they must have been when Peter had got in trouble with blue matter. The Spine had been angry, Peter had said, when he worked on building Squeaks without telling him.

With a click and a series of tiny hisses, Squeaks felt feeling come back to the very tips of her fingers. Peter silently indicated for her to stay still, and performed a few last checks to make sure everything had linked up correctly. When he’d checked that she could move each finger on demand, he announced that he was finished, and slumped back in his chair.

Squeaks found her eyebrows raised in concern, and checked her time stamps. She’d sat in the chair about 4 hours ago, and Peter must have worked solidly since then. He looked exhausted.

“Did you take any breaks? You’ve been working for hours.”

Peter shrugged, “No. But now I can sit and stare into space for a bit. You lot go off and pull faces at each other.”

Squeaks grinned, and caught The Spine’s eye, who returned a sidelong smile that got her wondering if her new skin could blush.

She suspected that she would be doing a lot of grinning in the next few days.

*****


	14. Sharing memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, two chapters in a rush. It's almost like I write sporadically or something.  
> I'm hoping that something in the way Squeaks behaves has been obvious, but it's time I put it into words. And it's time for something big.
> 
> TLL 3/8/17

A few weeks later, as Squeaks lay in the long grass behind the Manor, she found herself unable to shake a pair of smiling green eyes from her mind.

The Manor was a little way up hill, so here the ground sloped away from her into the distance, the ground peppered with patches of green among the sandy earth. She had echoes in her head of English hills, and this was so different. There wasn’t the luminous green of the endless grass, or the tall trees which closed in every horizon, or the clouds. She smiled to herself. There were never the clouds. There was nothing to close in the land around her that seemed to stretch out as long as it pleased.

Out here, it was quiet, and she was alone with the blue sky and the thought of a silver man with broad shoulders...

She pursed her lips, and looked down at the wildlife instead. She’d taken enormous pleasure in discovering that being made of metal she couldn’t be bitten or stung, and could just sit in the grass playing with the black widows and rattlesnakes. The animals were fascinating. She ruffled her fingers through the grass, but there was little response except for the escape of a stray grasshopper.

Leaving her once again with the air and the tall man with a voice like...

Agh. It wasn’t like she was ignorant of how she felt, but she’d come out here to try and think of anything else. But over the last weeks, tingles up the back of her neck had become light-headedness, which had become these thoughts that bubbled up in her mind unprovoked. Robots, she discovered, could develop crushes.

Squeaks picked out a prickly twig and began worrying it in frustration. That was to say, _she_ could develop crushes, but she was acutely aware that whatever connection she shared with Rachel made her just a little different. How much did it affect her actions? Did the other robots react the same way as she could? Could they feel and hate and love? Did The Spine have the capacity to recognise the misty eyed looks she tried to avoid him seeing, or the fact that her face clouded with steam whenever he touched her?

She began to pick off stubby, fleshy leaves, giving up and letting her mind stray. To the impossibly tall man who hid his laughter under his hat, who looked damn good in a tie and even better with his top button undone, who told her ridiculous stories of Rabbit when she was young and listened with rapture when she shared her own fuzzy memories of maybe being human.

The stick was free of leaves, and she began to pry off the thorns. He was charming. Handsome. Delightful. But what else would he be after a hundred years of practice?

And that was another of the strange things. He was so old, and she was only a couple of months old now, technically. She wasn’t sure how old Rachel had been, but she must’ve been in her twenties, so Squeaks was already sound of mind when she first woke. She wondered what the others had been like when they were very young*.

“Evening, Squeaks.”

She looked up with such a start that the stick – now a bare, worried wooden stem – snapped in her hand. The Spine stood beside her, his face open and welcoming, and Squeaks found herself suppressing a burst of steam. She tossed the heavily abused stick and smiled back up, hoping he didn’t focus too hard on her plant-shredding.

“Hey! What brings you out here?”

The Spine shrugged. His eyes had followed the discarded stick, and he was watching the bush it landed in with his head tilted.

“I spotted you from a window and thought you might like some company. May I join you?”

Squeaks faintly nodded as he kneeled down and began arranging his ludicrously long limbs around one another to sit on the ground. Sometimes he presented himself like he was more limb than robot. It took a few moments of silence before he spoke again.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you out here...”

“No, no. I was just taking a little time to myself.”

He nodded, and their mutual gazes travelled to the distance, where the sun was lazily tracking her way to the horizon.

“Just thinking to yourself?”

Squeaks nodded in response.

“What about?”

 _You,_ she thought, as her mind scrambled for something different to say, “oh, this and that.”

“You’re not bothered by those memories of yours again?”

Well, no. But it was a decent distraction. The Spine seemed to like her stories from before, helping her piece together what they were.

She pinged him a link to one of her memories from the before folder, selecting a short clip that she hadn’t gone through yet.

“Try this one,” she said, smiling, “it’s a little longer than a flash.”

She played the memory.

The emotional waves came before any visual or sound. There was boredom, and tiredness. And then a gentle but permanent sense of anxiety.

While they had the capability, the robots didn’t share their memories. They considered them to be personal and private, but Squeaks didn’t feel the same about Before memories. The longer she’d been in this body, the less they felt like hers, and they were usually so vague that she couldn’t work out what was happening anyway. She’d only shared them with The Spine because he showed interest, and she liked having something to talk about with him.

The sense of anxiety and fear was slowly building, coupled with the sound of white noise, and then blackness split into foggy, dull colours. The colours separated as the fear grew, and then snapped into an image which disappeared in an instant, the memory snapping off with a mental click. As the image faded, Squeaks chuckled. Before her eyes had been a small wooden desk covered in papers with black scrawled writing.

“Exams,” The Spine mused. “again. You seem to have a lot of memories about exams.”

“Enough to earn their own file.” Just so, she renamed the memory and moved it into the Exams folder with the rest. She looked briefly over the rest of the folders, lingering over the file named ‘Nothing’. She felt a sense of dread when she thought of that memory, and had pointedly not watched it again.

She showed The Spine a couple of others, both of which were blurry flashes, although one was for being tired and the other was sadness. Neither was something they hadn’t seen before, but neither were they solid enough to be categorised. Squeaks had many flashes of emotion that she couldn’t pin to any particular moment.

After a minute, The Spine looked off into the distance again, his eyes darting thoughtfully back and forth.

“Could you show me one of the longer ones again? One of the happy ones?”

It was a new request. He’d never requested to watch a memory he’d already seen. Squeaks looked into his face, but he was still idly staring into the distance. She nodded, and leafed through her files for a memory she knew fitted the bill.

Rabbit’s voice was first to fill her mind. She let out a long, sonorous holler, the sound passing from Rachel's left side to her right with a thunder of heavy padded footfalls.

The corresponding emotion was excitement, and anticipation, as the darkness cleared to the same space Squeaks and The Spine were sitting in, Rabbit now a little way off, letting out her warcry as she stood astride a giant, white cat which was galloping along the back of the house. Rachel was pumping the wheels of her chair, and the waves of excitement grew again as she tried to catch up with the cat, but there was no way she could keep up, but up ahead, faced away from them and turning around too late was –

“AAAaaaeeeeee BUCK-A-SPIIIINE!!”

Rabbit had launched herself from Marshmallow’s back just in time to scream through the air and land on The Spine’s back, grasping his spines in her hands and pinning her knees to his waist. The blow knocked him forward but miraculously he stayed standing, and began twisting this way and that to shake Rabbit off, but not for long before an enthusiastic and momentum-driven giant cat bowled the both of them over and down the hill. The three of them threw up a cloud of dust and only stopped rolling when Marshmallow removed herself and curled up to lick off the dust as gracefully as she could. As the dust cleared, The Spine could be seen face-down in the dirt, Rabbit sat up on his back, her fingers still pinned to his silver protrusions**. She looked down at her hands, almost surprised, and looked up at Rachel as she threw her arms up in victory.

“15.8 seconds! A new record!”

She hardly finishes the sentence before Spine had bucked up and somehow ended up hanging Rabbit upside down by her ankles.

Rachel was helpless by this point, and had collapsed, roaring with laughter. The situation got no better when Rabbit extended her legs to whip herself under The Spine and pop his head off from behind. Rachel's sides ached and her eyes streamed...

Squeaks smirked, as the memory faded with the sound of laughter, at the look on The Spine’s face watching the memory with her.

“You asked for happy,” she reminded him.

“Not at my expense.”

“You didn’t specify.”

His mouth turned up at the edges as his eyes met hers. _That damn smile._

“That’s cheating, by the way," Spine rebutted, "Giant cats are not allowed in Buck-a-Spine. Not that I encourage the game.”

“You say that like it was my fault. I wasn’t even there.”

“Consider it a warning. Before you go trying anything.”

“Uhh – hi. One leg, giant wheel. I’m not riding you _or_ the cat.”

“Good. Walter knows I get enough scratches from Rabbit as it is.”

Squeaks sniggered, and went back to staring into the distance where the sky was starting to turn copper.

“Why do –“

If the sentence was finished, neither of them heard it. Everything was suddenly drowned out by a noise that made the ground tremble. It was a whirring, creaking noise, like huge engines working overtime, accompanied by a horrendous grinding and snapping like stone was being split in two. They looked around them but couldn’t see anything but the Manor; but the look in Spine’s face was one of horror.

“What is that?” Squeaks roared, although she wasn’t sure if he could even hear her.

The Spine gestured for her to get up, and when she had they sprinted for the Manor. Squeaks got more worried every time she looked into The Spine’s face, which grew dark and fearful.

They ducked into a back doorway, and The Spine navigated them through the halls. He looked everywhere for signs of something wrong, always running towards the sound. The noise got angrier, louder and closer. It was metallic, like rusty knifes on a whetstone.

They were nearly through the Manor, and the noise was still before them. Then, as they skidded into the front entrance hall the noise, suddenly, stopped.

The Spine ground to a halt and Squeaks followed suit. The sound of her tires squealing on the marble floor echoed throughout the room, in the sudden quiet. Now, there was only a gentle creaking and cracking, coming from the archway that formed the front door of Walter Manor.

As she and Spine moved towards the arch, Rabbit tore in from a nearby corridor, and Peter and Hatchworth appeared a few moments later on the upstairs balcony. They all moved to the door, looking out at what had called them all to the front of the Manor.

The drive was in ruins. Slabs of concrete stuck out at all angles, broken into pieces all the way down to the road.

A huge boat stood at the head of the line of destruction. It had turned onto its side, and the hull was torn and dark from being forced up the road. Black curled letters up the side read ‘floaty time’.

As they passed through the door, a man stepped off the boat. He was tall, dressed in black with a travel cape and a wide-brimmed hat. He turned to face them, and the man – no, the robot, Squeaks saw as the light shimmered off brass plates – smiled, holding an ice cream cone that dribbled over his fingers.

“Hey there!” He held out the ice cream, “double triple-dipped dinosaur cherry?”

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *For more on what the robots were like when they were young, I highly recommend reading snurgle's "Artificial Life And Other Unnatural Things" on this archive. It covers the first year of the robots' existence, which means BABY RABBIT, SPINE AND JON and is utterly delightful. And weird. You're welcome.
> 
> **Author’s note: I am never using those words again. 
> 
> YAAAAAYYY IT'S ZERO! I really wanted to write about his arrival. The picture of him driving his boat up the road was just too funny - it only took what, 9 months for me to write him in? And I hope you like an aggressive game of Buck-A-Spine. That was a good round.


	15. A freshly melted ice cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, I dunno if this chapter is any good or not. But we've got Zero. And songs. And other generally happy times. And a little meta. Kind of.
> 
> TLL 11/9/17

“You invested in...”

“Love,” said Zero.

Peter and the robots were gathered about the kitchen table, Peter with his head propped up on one arm, Squeaks standing nearby as she found sitting difficult in the rickety wooden chairs. The others all sat in various poses of exasperation, except for Zero, who had nestled his head onto his cradled hands, blue eyes focused intently on the ice-cream he had placed on the table. It was rapidly turning into a purple-and-brown puddle.

“Love?” asked Hatchworth with bemusement.

“Love,” Zero answered. He didn’t look up from the table.

“Love?” Rabbit perked up.

“Love.”

“Love!”

“Love.”

“Lo-”

“-Knock it off, guys,” Peter cut in. 

“Anyway,” Zero continued, apparently ignorant of the conversation that had happened around him, “humans don’t want love any more. I lost all the money.”

The Spine glanced up at Squeaks and pinged her a message. _In case you didn’t know, Zero left the Manor a few years ago to pursue a solo career. He did well. Got a TV show and everything. Made a pretty penny._

_And lost it all_ , she sent back.

_Sure sounds like it._

“It’s not that we don’t want it,” Peter continued, “you just can’t buy it.”

“Yeah, I guess I worked that out eventually,” Zero replied glumly, “didn’t you read my book?”

From seemingly nowhere, he flourished a thick hardback with threadbare edges and a broken spine, bearing all the signs of a book well-read.

“How I Lost All My Money By Investing in an Abstract Concept,” Squeaks read aloud. The cover featured Zero staring straight ahead with his fingers tented and an eyebrow raised.

“Want a copy?” said Zero hopefully.

“Uh – maybe later. Thanks.”

Zero’s eyes filled with a puppy-dog sadness, but he rested his head back on his hands and went back to watching ice-cream. The table was slightly bowed in Hatchworth’s direction, and a gloopy tendril started to seep from the gathering soup on the table in his direction. A strange silence fell, and Squeaks realised that all the robots were fixated on the ice-cream flow. Peter sighed, and looked up at Squeaks.

“They did this a _lot_ , back when Zero lived here,” he said in way of explanation. The Spine stretched out a flat palm towards the goo, but Zero whipped out a hand to smack him away with lightening speed before resuming his position.

“Can I stay, Peter?” Zero answered, not looking up.

Peter didn’t move for a few moments, but in that way that somehow suggested his face would’ve been pulling an array of complicated expressions if only Squeaks could see it.

“Let me put it this way,” he said, “if you leaving involves that boat being dragged back down the drive, then I think I’d prefer it if you stayed.”

“Did I not do it right, Peter?”

“No, Zero.”

“But I had to get Floaty Time up the drive-“

“No you didn’t, Zero.”

_Memo,_ arrived a voice in Squeaks’ head, _put back all the ‘do not touch’ signs for Zero._

It was sent in a group message to herself, Rabbit and Hatchworth. Squeaks glanced up and caught The Spine’s eye briefly, but he dropped his gaze back to the table.

_Where are those? -_ Rabbit’s voice.

_Next to the box of ‘do not touch, Rabbit’ signs._

_Ah._

Zero nodded, and knocked Hatchworth’s elbow out of the way. Hatchworth had produced a dishcloth from his hatch and attempted to mop up the trail of goo that was veering dangerously towards him.

_What’s...what’s with the ice-cream?_ Squeaks sent back to the group.

Rabbit looked up with surprise, _you don’t like it?_

_I’m not sure I understand it._

_It’s ice-cream. What’s to understand?_

_It melts. It’s nice. But Zero won’t let us touch it,_ added Hatchworth, edging his chair away from the table.

Another moment of quiet passed, only marked by the gentle ticking of five robots in the same room.

_I thought you didn’t like the WiFi chats_ , The Spine added on a private channel.

_I don’t. But... I don’t want to offend Zero_ , Squeaks answered lamely.

The Spine smirked, _we’ll make a robot of you yet._

“Anyway,” Zero spoke, his reverie breaking as ice-cream began to dribble off the table between Hatchworth’s legs, “who’s the little bot?”

Zero sat up in his chair and offered Squeaks the largest smile she thought she’d ever seen. Stunned, she found herself grinning back before she knew what she was doing. Out of the corner of her eye, she swore she saw Rabbit wink at Hatchworth.

“This is Squeaks,” offered Peter, when she didn’t reply, “she’s new to the family.”

“A new build?” Zero nodded encouragingly, “I didn’t think you made them anymore.”

“I’ve made more while you’ve been away,” Peter mused, “with surprising regularity.”

“What do you think of the Manor, buddy?”

“Weird,” Squeaks answered, truthfully, watching ice-cream dripping onto the floor, “but I like it here. I think.”

Zero chortled. “How long have you been here?”

“A few weeks.”

“Then this is just the beginning. I promise,” his voice dropped to a half whisper, “it’ll get weirder.”

They exchanged grins. Something about Zero oozed the sort of charisma that said, ‘I am, have always been, and will always be, your buddy’. Squeaks found herself wanting to help and impress him, which was entirely at odds with the feeling that Zero would treat her like his best friend no matter what she did wrong.

“Alright, Squeaks,” Zero stood up, and clapped his hands on the table. A dribble of ice-cream splattered onto the floor as the table shuddered, “what should we do now?”

“Oh! Uh... I don’t really know. What do you like to do?”

“You could repave the road,” muttered Peter, but Zero didn’t seem to hear him.

“Well how about a song? I’ve missed singing with all of you.”

A general sound of agreement murmured around the table, and Rabbit lifted her head from her elbow, “Hey yeah! We’ve not sung in a little while. And we’ll need some new songs soon.”

“D’you sing, Squeaks?”

“I do. Or I did. I mean, before I was me, I did. Um.” Squeaks closed her eyes, simulated a deep breath, and started again. She suspected now was not the time to explain the technicalities of the fact that she existed before she was herself, although she wondered how long it would be until someone would need to explain, “I sing barbershop.”

“Neat. What songs do you know?”

“’I can’t give you anything but love’ is one,” she rattled off a few others before stopping short. She raided her memories but came up dry, “that’s it, I think.”

Squeaks frowned to herself. Somehow she knew that Rachel must’ve known hundreds of songs, but going through her memories Squeaks only knew those she’d sung in concerts. She only had a handful to remember.

“You don’t know any of ours,” mused Hatchworth, now standing in the corner. Now that Zero was suitably distracted, he’d surreptitiously pulled a vacuum hose from his hatch and was quietly sucking up melted cream from the floor.

“You write songs?”

There was a silence around the table as everyone looked up at Squeaks.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” The Spine was looking up at her with disbelief.

“No, I’m not sure she is,” Peter scratched the chin of his mask thoughtfully, “Rachel had memories which were never transferred to Squeaks. If you never actually sang while Squeaks was in the room – and you lot haven’t rehearsed in weeks, by the way – then it’s entirely possible that she wouldn’t know.”

Peter nudged his chair around so he could look at Squeaks over his shoulder, “This lot are the original steam man band. They go by Steam Powered Giraffe to the public. They’ve been performing for, oh, seventy years or more.”

“And you write your own songs?”

Zero sauntered around the table and put his hand on Squeaks’ shoulder, bending his knees so he could look her in the eye.

“Come with me, little one,” he said excitedly, “we’re gonna sing to you.”

***

It was hardly astonishing that there were rooms in the Manor which Squeaks hadn’t yet discovered. The rehearsal room Zero led – or rather dragged – her to was tall, dark and rectangular. The floor was wooden and painted black, and the walls were covered on every side by a heavy black curtain hung on steel railings. The hallway outside had been florescent white, but the light was cut off from the room by the curtains, which fell over the doorframe. More curtains draped sideways into the room, like the wings of a stage. The whole thing was illuminated by gentle yellow lights.

When the automatons entered the room, they wordlessly walked each to an instrument, several of which were scattered about the floor. Rabbit picked up a fetching black and red bass, while The Spine chose a black guitar. He had to perform a complicated double-hitch manoeuvre to get the strap onto his back over his spikes, which Squeaks watched with amusement. Hatchworth opted for a drum kit at the back of the room, tapping the pedal experimentally as the others tuned their instruments. Zero took Squeaks’ hand and directed her to a spot in the middle of one of the longer walls, facing into the room with the others all facing her, before he stood back and closed his eyes.

There was an expectant pause, then Rabbit’s head ticked and drooped.

“Lyin’ awake like I’ve been before...”

Zero sang, alone and soulful.

“Miles away, I can’t see straight no more,

“Right in your space, I just walked through your door,

“But I’m still so far away...”

They all broke into song, a sad, beautiful beat playing the undertones to Zero’s song. Squeaks watched them sing, and found herself mouthing along to the words. The automatons looked almost lost in the harmonies, Spine’s head nodding in a melancholy beat.

But above it all, Squeaks eyes locked onto Zero’s. From his glowing blue eyes, it looked as though his heart was breaking...

With his final notes, Squeaks felt her eyes fill with oil.

She blinked the oil away, and realised that in the silence that followed, all eyes were on her. She nodded and sighed, managing a strange clucking noise as a sudden build up of oil cleared from her voice box.

“OK,” she managed, feeling that something was expected of her, “you write songs.”

“Did you like it?” Zero pressed, his hands drawing up in fists towards his chest in childlike anticipation.

At that, Squeaks couldn’t help but break into a grin, “Of course! But Zero, it’s such a sad song...”

Zero began to knit his fingers together nervously, and his eyes darted to his hands, “I wrote it down in the basement. I’d been down there a little while, and I got pretty lonely, before I met-”

He cut himself off with an almighty gasp and his eyes widened.

“BEEBOP!” he shouted, and reached across to grab The Spine by the shoulder, “is my buddy still here, The Spine? I haven’t seen him!”

“Right where you left him, Zero.”

He seemed to fly on his feet as he left the room, and Squeaks looked on bemused at the curtain which oscillated gently in his wake. Energetic footfalls ran into the distance.

Hatchworth ground his gears in something which sounded very much like a polite cough.

“Zero has a very particular set of attention spans...”

“Namely, he fluctuates between no focus and all of it,” The Spine nodded, idly tuning his guitar, “but I think you’d agree he’s perfectly good humored.”

“I rather thought so,” Squeaks smiled back. The Spine responded with a twitch of his lip, which felt that much more restrained now she’d met the ball of friendly insistence that was Zero.

Squeaks leaned back against the wall, her hands tucked in behind the small of her back.

“So if Zero’s not been here for years, do you know other songs without him?”

Rabbit threw a knowing smile at Spine, and looked back at Squeaks.

“Yes. Yes, we do.”

***

They sang Clockwork Vaudeville. They sang The Red Queen, and Fancy Shoes, and Rollerskate King. They hopped between instruments like mad things, and then Rabbit unveiled a stripy red megaphone from behind a curtain and sang Brass Goggles, and once Squeaks had a grip on what was going on she sang along and waved her arms in time to the music, and all the while she smiled like an idiot. 

They were, unbelievably, her first notes at the Manor, and it felt so right. She wondered how she had ever been here and _not_ singing. She had to know more songs...

Which made it all the more dismaying when they stopped playing. They'd sung constantly for quite a while, but for the first time in quite a while, Squeaks had found she had lost track of time. It was like the music drowned out the insistent ticking in her mind,

“Isn’t there more?” Squeaks pleaded, “I want to hear more!”

Rabbit smiled kindly and put down her megaphone, “oh, there’s more. But it’s not good for us to sing too much.” She coughed, and Squeaks heard a distinct guttering whine underneath, “It kinda sets off the old bellows.”

Squeaks glanced over at Spine, who seemed to be rocking back and forth on his balance point a little more than he had before. Hatchworth had started to issue a gentle hiss of steam from the vents in his neck.

“Should you have been singing at all?” Squeaks said, suddenly worried for the health of the old robots.

“Oh yeah,” said Rabbit quickly, “it’s good to get the exercise, so long as we don’t overdo it. Little and often, and then tell the Walter Workers what needs repairin’.”

She let out a rattling hiss as her head jerked alarmingly to the side, but smiled amiably and rotated something in her ear until her head faced forwards again with a series of little clicking noises.

“Neck calibration,” she explained as Hatchworth and Spine sidled over, “gets out of sync with the visual feedback sometimes.”

“You did enjoy yourself?” Hatchworth cocked his head to one side in enquiry.

“Utterly. Can I hear more songs, sometime? Do you have many more?”

“Just six CDs of the stuff,” said The Spine, “we’ve got copies of them all. Come on, I’ll get them for you.”

He gestured for her to follow him as he walked towards the doorway, and pulled aside the curtain, ushering her through first. The bright white light of the hallway cut into the softly-lit room like a blade.

They only went to the next room on the right, as it turned out, which was grey from floor to ceiling, although with varying definitions of the word ‘grey’. The walls were covered in undulating foam, and the room was divided into cubicles by way of large glass panels, each containing a large microphone which hung from the ceiling, looking very much like the most clinical of recording studios. What set it apart was the carpet, which astoundingly managed to be simultaneously grey and an assault on the senses. The swirling floral patterns were criminal in their garishness, and Squeaks saw that the patterns not only never quite repeated, but somehow the whole thing was slightly off-centre. It gave the impression of being there before the studio was. Squeaks wondered if someone had moved the studio in, and somehow turned the old carpet grey in an attempt to fit the colour scheme.

But as soon as they entered the room, The Spine turned back to face the way they’d come, and inspected the wall. Squeaks turned to look, and started at the sight of the wall, which was covered with shelves and shelves of CDs, with barely an inch of spare space. She looked at the shelf closest to her and read some of the titles; ‘The Entire Works of Chopin’, ‘At the drop of another hat’ and ‘4:33, John Cage’ all caught her eye before The Spine reached out, pulled down a handful of cases and passed them to her.

They all had ‘Steam Powered Giraffe’ written in large, curling letters across the front. Leafing through them, Squeaks saw the faces of the robots she knew on the covers, along with some she didn’t recognise. She turned the pile to read the titles on the spines.

“Steam World Heist doesn’t fit,” she said quickly, “the rest all have numbers in the names.”

“The rest are studio albums.”

“Ah.” She opened Mk III at random, and looked inside. Hatchworth’s scrawled handwriting was all over it. An arrow pointed to The Spine’s face, marked ‘too suave’.

“Are you going to make more?” Squeaks turned to the back of the back of Quintessential, reading the titles.

“Probably. We’re a bit stuck on the next one, though. It’ll need a title.” The Spine rubbed the back of his neck, “We were going to go with ‘six powered giraffe’, but apparently that’s... easily misconstrued with something else.”

“How so?”

The Spine smiled oddly and shook his head, “we have an Internet following. Just promise me you won’t Google the title. Or if you must, I suggest spelling it _very_ carefully.”

Squeaks stopped to think for a moment for potential titles.

“Oh, I know... How about ‘ _Sees_ and Desist’? Y’know, like the French for six? Sounds like ‘Cease and desist...’”

She trailed off at the look on his face, which had twisted into an amused smile.

“No good?” she added in a little voice.

He shook his head, but his eyes sparkled and he released a little wisp of steam, “It’s not as bad as some of the stuff we’ve come up with. But let me know if you think of anything better.”

Squeaks shrugged and looked back down at the CDs, “well, _I_ thought it was good. Where can I find a CD player? I want to play all of these.”

As she looked up at the thousands of recordings filling the wall, she suspected that would take a while. But then, time was probably a commodity she had to spare, and if there was this much music to be heard then _she_ wanted to hear it.

“Oh, we don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one.”

“No.”

Squeaks gave him a slow and steady look, which he returned pensively.

“You have,” Squeaks said carefully, “ _thousands_ of CDs on this wall. And no CD player.”

The Spine bowed his head for a moment to think, and looked back up at her, “does that sound silly?”

“ _Yes,_ Spine.”

Despite herself, she noticed how cute he was when he forgot the Manor was abnormal.

“Well that’s OK,” The Spine shrugged, “let’s pick up the others and sit outside for a spell, and I’ll play them for you.”

“How?”

Then he caught her by surprise, because The Spine actually _winked._ He locked eyes with Squeaks and twisted round, so his back was facing her.

With a click and a high-pitched _whirr_ , his top-left spine separated along the thin edge, and half of it slid out slowly towards her.

In short, he _was_ a CD player.

Squeaks had never seen him looking so smug.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (No sin here!)
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, grant me this. Just let me believe in the silliness that is Spine being a 6-foot-odd tall shiny CD player in a hat.


	16. Molten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *SPOILER Warning*
> 
> If you don't yet know the outcome of Vice Quadrant and/or Quintessential, and don't want to, 1) Catch up, Vice Quadrant's on YouTube, 2) You might want to skip this chapter. The above are definitely discussed.
> 
> Trigger warning: Burning to death. Things may start to get a little strange from here.
> 
> Oh, I almost forgot: a brief shout-out to everyone from the Cavalcadium Discord server. I joined recently and everyone there is lovely; if you've not joined, go and say hello. Also a thank you to my Beta reader (I have one now, how exciting) and to the bubbly reader who sends me approval when I do something amusing. You all keep me going on this long, bizarre story.
> 
> 10/11/17 TLL

Squeaks was laid back on a large blanket under the starlight. Rabbit was sat up next to her, long legs stretched out in front of her, leaning back on her hands and looking up into the sky. Hatchworth was a little way off, curled up on the ground making daisy chains*, and Zero was impossible to miss as he’d foregone the discomfort of lying on the ground, and instead lay resplendent on the back of Marshmallow, who was purring sleepily while Zero scratched behind her ears.

The Spine was on the edge of the blanket Rabbit and Squeaks were sharing, and had been shifted further and further in that direction by his sister as the hours had gone by. Somehow, though, he still had space to lie on his front with his eyes closed.

It had already been dark when they had all come outside, Rabbit proudly hefting a large tartan blanket under one arm. The Spine had picked out Album One from its case and reached around to insert it into the drive on his back (it was a little further than he could reach, and he furtively extended his arm the extra couple of inches he needed over his shoulder), and then set up a frequency that all the robots could tune into.

Squeaks had found this even stranger than the WiFi groups, when she heard the tunes projected into her own head.

The music went on for hours, but no one had anything particularly better to do, and so they had listened, or hummed, or tapped along with the beat. Squeaks registered everything attentively, and laid back to watch the stars slowly moving overhead. The night sky out here was beautiful beyond words, far enough from the city that all the stars seemed bright. The Manor almost looked small, the sky was so wide, and the only thing disturbing the darkness was the half-moon. That, and the lights from the eyes of the other robots. Blue lights bounced off the walls, depending on which way they looked, tinged with the green glow of Rabbit’s oddball eye. The Spine had closed his eyes almost as soon as he had lain down, shutting off his eyes from the world.

The heat of the day soon leaked from the ground, and by MK III the air was decidedly cold, but Squeaks found she didn’t mind. She had flash memories of heavy coats and gloves in a bitter wind, and that for Rachel being cold was very bad indeed, but now it just seemed to make her sensors complain less. She noticed the night go quiet as, one by one, everyone’s cooling systems settled down or turned off.

By ‘She Said Maybe’, she discovered that she could ‘overlap’. She could project images into the real world, and so she projected the celestial Sphere onto the night sky and used it to look up constellations and planets, and track the Earth’s rotation through the night.

Then the night erupted into ‘Go Spine Go’, and _everyone_ sang the whole thing**. Squeaks laughed so hard the overlap clicked off and she spent another 10 minutes working out how to bring it back again.

Sometime later, halfway through The Vice Quadrant, the frequency began to hiss softly. Squeaks looked up to see that The Spine still had his eyes closed. Rabbit looked down at Squeaks, her eyes startlingly bright after staring into the sky.

 _Next one?_ She pinged.

Squeaks nodded, and Rabbit opened the next case. She clicked open the drive in The Spine’s back, gently resting her hand on his back when he stirred.

“It’s OK buddy,” she murmured, “I got it.”

She changed the disc, and the second half of the album hummed into life while The Spine blearily opened one eye and closed it again.

As Squeaks listened, she focussed on the Orion Nebula, trying to zoom her eyes to get a better look, but the sky just looked pixilated and hazy up close. She zoomed out and squinted instead, but found that really didn’t do much.

Then she wondered – if she could project into what she saw when she was conscious, what about if she tried it the other way round?

She let herself power down, closing her eyes, and settled into her modelling space. When she was comfortable in the dark, she searched for the frequency and the music tuned back into her head. Perfect. She smiled to herself – she could set up her models as usual, but could still set her body to receive signals from the real world.

“Remind me,” she said to the empty modelling space in general, “not to talk about the others when they’re asleep.”

She spent a while compiling data from different Earth-based telescopes, trying to knit them together with pictures of the Earth’s surface to generate the Earth surrounded by stars. The quality of the data wasn’t as good as the space-based telescopes delivered, but it would do.

But while she built the model in her head, she listened to the rest of the album with her hands crossed on her lap. The songs on their own didn’t make a tremendous amount of sense, and Squeaks had the feeling there was a story she was supposed to be following. There was... Commander Cosmo... and some sky sharks...and a space whale called Jumbo. After that, it was a bit of a blur.

While the model established itself, she looked around online trying to find something useful, and happened upon a huge illustrated timeline of events, which she perused to the tune of Starlight Starshine***. Everything made much more sense, after that****.

As the Earth flashed into being, and stars loaded patch-by-patch around her, Squeaks nestled into orbit and let the music wash over her, lying parallel to the equator with her legs crossed. Still legs, she noticed. Still human.

By the end of Oh No, she was in tears, and hardly knew why. This ‘astronaut’, seemingly based on another Walter, was evil - he had to be, surely - but Squeaks still wept over his death and didn’t understand why she was crying. She was fairly certain one wasn’t supposed to sympathise with the bad guy.

By the time the album was finished, Squeaks had so many more questions than were answered by the timeline. Were they continuing the story? Who were these heroes they were on about? What happened to Holly?

The quiet was swiftly interrupted by the music of Steam World Heist, and so Squeaks shrugged and whipped about the planet until she hung above San Diego. The star data was from the turn of the century, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. The stars hadn’t moved markedly since then. She looked up at Orion again, and the Nebula was much more impressive. What looked from a distance like a faint, reddish star turned into a huge, pink and blue cloud as she got closer, with hot white young stars at its core. She watched it for a little while, looking how the immense dust clouds filtered the light, and then she turned to find another.

For another hour or so, she hunted nebulae. She could look them up and then dart about the sky until she found one, and then just lay and look at it for a while. They were all gorgeous.

She even bounced across the planet until she found Saturn and hung around there for a while, but eventually she drifted back to Earth and circled it listening to the last few songs. Delilah Moreau was excellent.

It wasn’t until Dream Machine that she realised that her eyes, staring into the sky at nothing in particular, had been drawn to a small spec of dull light ahead. Puzzled, Squeaks checked the directory to see what she was looking at, but apparently there was nothing there.

She looked again, more closely, and the colours became more defined and separate.

What she saw seemed improbable, but unmistakable. She frowned to herself, trying to look closer and increase the resolution, but it was just a few pixels on a picture from 16 years ago. Still, there was no mistaking the purple and white streaks she could see in the sky, about 200 light years away. It certainly wasn’t a comet, a planet or star, and Squeaks started to wonder whether anything she heard at Walter Manor was just a story.

She switched off the model and woke up, opening her eyes. Her vision was full of Rabbit’s bright eyes, hovering over her. Rabbit was poised over her upper lip with a marker pen, but quickly hid it behind her back when she saw Squeaks was awake. Rabbit stood up quickly and looked about with her hands behind her back and a butter-wouldn’t-melt smile.

“Y’comin’ inside, Squeaky?” she said innocently, “we’re gonna head back in to sleep.”

Squeaks looked up to see Zero trying to encourage Marshmallow to Walk On, and Hatchworth was already leaning against the back wall of the house with his arms folded. The Spine was still laid down, and muttering to himself something about diamonds.

“I thought the CDs were just stories,” Squeaks said as she sat up.

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because I saw Cosmica and the Astronaut.”

Rabbit, who had leaned in to help Squeaks stand, paused with Squeaks’ arms around her neck.

“That’s funny,” she said slowly, “c-cause I thought you was sleeping.” She hauled Squeaks into a standing position, and walked over to The Spine to shove him off the blanket.

“I was powered down, but I was just modelling.”

“Modelling?”

The Spine grunted in complaint.

“Yeah. That weird bit before you wake up where you can control what’s going on in your head but without activating your body.”

“OK. I call it dream-state. What did you see?”

“I was modelling a view of the stars from Earth and I spotted this purple smudge in the sky- ”

“-probably a comet-“

“-comets aren’t purple. Nothing in space that small is purple.”

“A smudge on the lens, then.”

“That _glows?”_

“Sounds plausible.”

“Give it a rest, Rabbit,” The Spine interjected, who was now vertical and shaking the dust out of the blanket, “what did you see?”

“It was pretty blurry. But there was a glowing streak of purple and white light. And it wasn’t categorised. And,” she paused as she looked up other images of the same patch of sky, “when you look there later, they aren’t there anymore.”

There was a pause, interrupted by the clatter of Zero falling off a large white cat with a yell.

“That could be _any_ mysterious purple phenomenon,” Rabbit shrugged.

“I’d believe you if you hadn’t tried to explain it away.”

The Spine sighed.

“Give Peter the details of where you found it, and he’ll get that sorted out,” he said, “we must’ve missed one.”

“So I’m right?”

The Spine nodded, rolled up the blanket and shoved it at Rabbit, and together they walked over to Hatchworth.

“Though you might have guessed, we have to keep it quiet.”

“You’re hiding any evidence that they’re real?”

“We have to.”

“Why?”

“’cause the robots went on an adventure,” said Zero with a waggle of his eyebrows as he walked over.

“So here’s the thing,” Spine continued, “the whole Vice Quadrant story is really happening. That’s not to say it really happened, because it hasn’t yet – a lot of the story doesn’t happen for another two hundred years. Or so.”

“How did you write an album about something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“It already happened for us. We were there.”

“You were there. In the future.”

“Don’t believe us?” asked Hatchworth. They had walked through to the back hall, where the candles flickered soothingly upside down in the dark.

“I’m not sure there’s much sense in saying I don’t,” Squeaks mused. “So you can travel in time now?”

Rabbit pulled a face, “we can’t really answer that question.”

Squeaks looked around at the robots, feeling more and more confused as the conversation went on. They had stopped at the bottom of the staircase, idling in a small circle.

“Alright... So what happened next? You had to go and fight the Necronaut, right?”

“Maybe.”

“So you must have won, or you wouldn’t be here.”

She looked from face to face, but they were all unreadable.

“ _Right?_ ” she pressed, starting to feel a little scared. Surely they wouldn’t have been able to come back if hadn’t beaten the Necronaut? Squeaks imagined the three robots barely escaping from a red, burning Earth back in time through some wormhole, or something.

“Listen,” said The Spine slowly, putting a hand on the back of her shoulder. Any other time the touch would’ve been welcome, but Squeaks was distracted by a sense of impending doom.

“Squeaks, for the rest of the planet, for Cosmica and Peter up there, none of this has happened yet. While we were up there, we met this woman-”

“She turned up on our spaceship,” interrupted Rabbit.

“- and she’s quite practiced in time travel-” Spine continued, ignoring her.

“-I think she was the Time Police-” Rabbit carried on regardless.

“No,” said Hatchworth, “she had a title.”

“Are you sure? Her space ship had ‘Police’ on it.”

“I thought she said Lady... Jane Smith, was it?”

“I thought it was _Doctor_ Smith.”

“-and she _told_ us,” The Spine said, just a little louder, “that what we know is dangerous.”

“Spoilers are dangerous,” Rabbit muttered to no-one in particular.

“Cosmica doesn’t know what’s going to happen. Commander Cosmo doesn’t know, and people who know the songs don’t even know that the people up there are real, so no-one’s going to tell them.”

“But if Cosmica knew, they wouldn’t kill so many-”

“Or if we give them the idea, they might kill _more_.”

“We could prepare the planet! Protect against the Necronaut!”

“What if someone decides to use that to their advantage? Humanity would just argue over the best way to fight him and descend into war.”

“That sounds pessimistic.”

Hatchworth issued a gust of steam from his nose, “you’d be surprised what we’ve seen humans fight over.” To Squeaks surprise, his face wrinkled in disgust.

Squeaks raised her hands in growing despair, “so why not just _tell_ them how to beat him?”

“Because even _if_ we knew how to beat him,” said Rabbit, giving Squeaks a look that confirmed nothing one way or the other, “there are other bad guys. There are people who would _kill_ to know how to control something that powerful. Tell everyone and it becomes a race of who can find him first.”

Squeaks felt...unwell. Appalled. “So you do nothing?”

The Spine gave a resigned tilt of his head. “The Doctor was very persuasive. We made all the same arguments you have, but she said it was a point of maximum time-potential. What is happening is the best possible version of it; any change will affect that, and it’ll be worse. A ‘fixed point in time’, I think she called it.”

“But you won’t even tell me what happens. How bad is it?”

“We _can’t_ tell you. We really can’t.”

Rabbit offered out a hand as she began walking up the steps, but Squeaks refused it and rolled up her ramp by herself. She stared at the wooden boards of the ramp thoughtfully as they all ascended the stairs in silence.

“You wrote the songs,” she said, when they had gone a few steps.

“They’re just songs. Why waste a good story?”

“But isn’t it a warning? People might notice and do something about it.”

Zero chuckled darkly, “’Crazy Horses’ came out 40 years ago. People don’t listen to songs too hard.”

The Manor was deathly quiet, and they reached the top of the stairs and travelled into a dark hallway where the lights had all been turned out for the night. No-one was awake at this early hour of the morning.

Squeaks found herself dwelling on the subject. She thought of the other automatons, and how old they were. They were all over a hundred… she didn’t see why they wouldn’t reach two hundred. Then, she supposed, there was no reason she wouldn’t either, which would mean that she might live to see the Necronaut come to the planet. She shuddered internally at the realisation that she might see the end of the world.

She tried to put it out of her mind, but it was difficult. She kept finding herself imagining all the different ways the future might have played out. Perhaps there was – or would be – a huge war, and the planet died. Maybe Peter’s descendants built many more robots, and these were the only ones to survive. Or maybe they didn’t make it back at all, and Peter uploaded their memories to newly built robots. Squeaks glanced over at Rabbit. She didn’t _look_ new, but maybe that would explain the green eyes. Perhaps Peter found himself having to reconstruct the automatons in a hurry...

She shook her head irritably. In retrospect, the last thing she needed was a secret that everyone else knew for a good two hundred years. Surely there was at least something they could tell her.

Squeaks paused as they reached the doorway to the lab she slept in, and turned back to the others.

“Can you tell me where the blue matter energy beam came from? The one that hit the space station?”

Rabbit shrugged, “Dunno. Maybe it was Kazooland.”

***

Squeaks had no idea what Kazooland was, but she felt that perhaps that would be too many questions for one day.

When the other robots had left to their rooms, Squeaks poked her head around the doorframe and headed back out again. She didn’t want to be asleep, right now.

After what she had been told, two realisations had formed.

Firstly, that whatever was going to happen when the Necronaut came, she would have to see it firsthand. The robots would have to go through it _again_.

Secondly, and somehow worse, was the realisation that she would still be here. She’d known it before, but now it felt like something gripped her core. She didn’t even know if robots ever _had_ to die. Somehow, a life that stretched on forever now felt more terrifying than one that she thought would end after, oh, sixty years or so.

But was life forever, or did she now just know her life would be limited by the coming of the Necronaut?

She rolled down the dark corridors, staring blankly at the ground ahead. She could hardly see the ground, and held out a hand to trail along the wall after she bumped into it because she couldn’t see where she was going. It vaguely occurred to her that the others’ glowing eyes gave them night vision. While she could extend the exposure time of her lenses, it didn’t help when she was moving, nor when there was no light to see by in the first place.

It was one on a growing list of things that Squeaks found herself being reluctantly jealous of the robots for. They were usually small, petty things, but they bothered her. The glowing eyes just made them look more alive. Rabbit’s bellows gave her the artificial breath that Squeaks couldn’t really replicate. They all had _legs_ , for pity sake, some more than their fair share. They all had history together – years of it – and while they made Squeaks feel perfectly welcome, somehow she just felt external to it all.

And of course, none of them were ever human.

Her hand went automatically to the goggles round her neck. Sometimes, it felt as though the memories belonged to someone else. Sometimes, still, she might almost forget who she was and jump when she saw her own hand made of metal. And sometimes, she resented that part of her that just made her that just made her that much more different than the others. Not quite as much as robot as the others. Not quite as human as Peter.

Every time she passed a doorway, the dim moonlight from the windows made it momentarily easier to see. When her hand fell into empty space, she realised there was a door on her right, but no light had come through. She stopped and felt her way into the room, her way barred by heavy fabric. She pushed it aside, and felt along the walls until she found a switch.

The room flooded with light with a dull click, and she found herself back in the rehearsal room. It felt huge and empty without the other robots here.

Two hundred years...

She didn’t even know if that was how long she had. In the timeline, that was how long it was before the Necronaut even existed. She didn’t know how much longer it would take for him to arrive. That made it at least two hundred years, and that was a very long time. Conflicting thoughts beat in her mind.

_I could learn everything I ever wanted to know._

_But I’m a computer. I could probably learn everything in a year, if I wanted to. What do I do with the rest of the time?_

_I can’t believe I’ve been granted immortality and I found a way to complain about it._

_I can’t believe I’m still afraid of death._

Maybe that was just it. Maybe putting off death for a few years didn’t make it any less terrifying. As a human, she’d die of old age or get sick, or anything else. Now, well, she didn’t even know how, or when. Unless whatever happened was the apocalypse.

Squeaks knew she had to stop thinking in that way. Maybe they would win, or the Necronaut would never come.

It was too easy to be scared of what would happen if he _did_.

_CALCULATING..._

It was easier to imagine all the things that might go wrong.

_CALCULATING..._

Squeaks had stood for so long, lost to the world wallowing in her own worries, that it took a while for her to notice the little voice in her mind.

_CALCULATION COMPLETE._

_LOADING SIMULATION..._

She hadn’t meant to set up any simulation.

_LOADING SIMULATION..._

Squeaks had only been thinking about what could go wrong.

_OPENING SIMULATION..._

Squeaks looked on bemused as the room faded away to be replaced by the simulation.

***

_Squeaks stood outside the Manor, looking out over the drive. Nothing else was important except the sky._

_The sky was red, and the colour deepened every moment._

_The air grew warmer, and somewhere above there was the sound of laughter. Hideous, throaty laughter._

_A hiss to her left made Squeaks look away from the sky. The robots stood with her on the steps, looking up. The Spine was closest, and was first to start venting steam as the temperature rose._

_Everything was hot, and dry._

_Peter stood behind her. He looked at her, and the sweat from behind his mask was beginning to steam too._

“ _Look away, Squeaks,” he said croakily, “you don’t need to see this.”_

 _She looked up as the sky began to turn orange and cast light on the ground. It_ _**glowed** _ _._

_Squeaks smelled smoke, and the halo of steam around all the robots began to fade as the steam simply gave way to gas._

_She turned back to Peter, but Rabbit snapped._

“ _Don’t_ _ **look**_ _!”_

_Squeaks whipped her head back, but not before she saw the thick, black smoke coming off Peter’s clothes. All the robots stared religiously at the sky, Rabbit’s eyes shining with oil._

_The air shimmered, and the sky got brighter._

_She heard the_ _**woomph** _ _as Peter’s clothing caught fire. She heard him growl against the pain._

_She heard the strange sighing sound of all the leaves and the long grass beginning to smoulder. The horizon started to glow as everything green turned amber._

_All the robots began to smoke as their own clothes began to burn._

_Peter began to scream. The air smelled like a roast._

_Squeaks began to shake, but stared up with the others as Peter screamed._

_Then the air was acrid, and the screaming stopped. She heard something thud to the ground, and the sound of fire began all around her._

_The trees were burning now. The sky was burning, turning from orange to white._

_Squeaks looked down at her clothing, which had turned to black tar and bubbled against her metal skin._

_The robots still stood, and stared up._

_When Squeaks glanced over, she thought The Spine turned away to hide his face. She could see the smoke issuing in little bursts from his silicone lips._

_Nothing but fire happened then, for a while. Fire, and the temperature which climbed ever higher._

_They lost Hatchworth, first. Squeaks was glad that she couldn’t really see him past The Spine, but she saw him struggle. She saw him pitch forward onto one knee and press his hand into the ground for support, before discovering that his extremities had become soft enough that his hand was gently stuck to the ground. He lowered himself to the ground, and waited._

_Zero collapsed soon after, but went slowly. He struggled to move, but knelt with Hatchworth’s vanishing form as his own face became half-formed, pieces of metal melting away._

_Squeaks tried hard to look up at the sky, and ignore the whimpers from Zero which turned to silence, and the hiss of metal on hot stone. But before very long, she saw Rabbit lift a hand to her face. She pried off her impossium mask, and tried to let it fall to the floor. Her fingers had become soft in the heat, and the face clung to them before falling away. Then she lowered herself to the floor, and Squeaks forced herself to look away, shaking. The sky was no solace. It was white, hot._

_Then there was Squeaks, and there was The Spine, steel and titanium. There hardly seemed any point at looking at the sky any more. Squeaks looked at The Spine, but he did not look back. She looked down at the growing pools of metal which began to trickle down the stone steps, sizzling as they went._

“ _The stone...” she said idly. Her voice sounded garbled, bubbly._

_The Spine looked down briefly, unseeing._

_The steps on which they stood began to bend under their weight, as they too lost their solidity. Squeaks felt her own face begin to slip, and raised her hand – too late, as her impossium mask buckled and melted like water, dripping down over her chest. The step where she stood buckled alarmingly, and Squeaks trying to move to steady herself before realising her rubber wheels had become useless long ago…_

_She cried out as she fell, twisting round and falling on her back on the stone which had begun to turn red and clung to her where she landed. She began to sink into the rapidly forming magma, copper trickling into the recess her body had created. She held out an arm desperately to the one man still standing, but her arm glowed yellow now and she knew there was no point._

_And The Spine looked down at her. His eyes glowed amber and were soft, unseeing._

_Squeaks wanted to cry out, but her pistons didn’t function. She tried to lift her other hand, but it had submerged into the magma and snapped wetly at the elbow when she tried to tug it free._

_Then her raised hand began to drip onto her face._

_Then she couldn’t see any more as her optics melted._

_The sounds of spitting metal died away, to be replaced by nothing._

_Sight fell away, and was replaced by nothing._

_Sense, smell, heat and body fell away. There was Nothing._

_Squeaks found herself somewhere familiar. It was not somewhere she had intended to visit. The simulation had ended, and she waited with terror to be returned to her body, in the present. Instead there was Nothing._

_She tried to call out, but couldn’t. She tried to move, or blink. She knew if she could she’d be shaking, but she simply couldn’t._

_Squeaks had been here before, once. She didn’t think it was possible to return. This was the memory of Nothing, somehow playing in her head._

_She began to panic as time dragged on. How long had she been out like this? She didn’t know how to come out of it. No-one knew where she was. Something was wrong, and no-one would find her for hours._

_After what felt like an age, there was a single, small noise. After however long Nothing had been, it was the most welcoming sound she could’ve imagined. It was a small click._

***

All at once, the vision was gone and the sight of the rehearsal room slammed back into place, sending Squeaks reeling backwards into the wall. She dug her fingers into the curtain behind her, holding onto it as if her life depended on it, which it very much felt like it did. Her eyes had gone wide and darted into every corner of the room as her nostrils flared and she vented steam until she could no longer see through the cloud.

The rehearsal room was here.

She was here.

Squeaks briefly held out a hand to look at before whipping it back to the curtain, which felt just about the most real thing at the moment. Her hand was still there. It hadn’t melted – she hadn’t melted.

So what the hell had just happened?

*****

*The longer the chain got, the more bizarre it appeared as Hatchworth pulled larger and stranger flowers from his hatch. The 4ft sunflower caused him some difficulties, but the rafflesia was only out of his hatch for a few seconds before Rabbit had snatched it, nose pinched, and tossed it as far away over the grounds as she could manage.

**With the possible exception of The Spine, who lay stubbornly ignoring the others with his eyes narrowed until he remembered he had an impressive solo. But once that was over, he put his head back down and closed his eyes again.

***It was dead catchy.

****once she looked up Peter Walter’s family tree and discovered how many Peters there were.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I never thought I’d look up: approximate metal compositions for all the robots, and their associated melting points. Ugh. On the plus side, now we know in what order the robots would melt. As long as I assume that Hatchworth is mostly brass, Zero's... well, everything, Rabbit is copper, The Spine titanium and Squeaks steel. There, you're glad about that, aren't you?
> 
> And say what you like, I'm still counting this as me being the first to include the 13th Doctor in fanfic.


	17. What ho

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! You'd think a Christmas one, but no.  
> My love to readers old and new, thanks to my beta reader and a friendly wave to any friends from the discord server. You delightful lot, you.  
> TLL 16/12/17

It was still early – far too early in the morning. Squeaks fretted to and fro behind the rehearsal curtain, wondering what she should do. She wanted to go and ask Peter about what just happened, but he would definitely be asleep. It would be rude to wake him unless it was an emergency... But a little voice in the back of Squeaks’ mind spoke up; _you just shut down involuntarily and imagined your own death. That probably counts_.

The robots should be powered down too, surely. But just in case...

She couldn’t message the group channel, in case that woke everyone up. She’d need to pick someone. It took a long time to pluck up the courage to send a message.

_Hello?_

She pinged it out into the aether, and waited. It took a few moments for The Spine’s voice to come back.

_You called?_

_I did. Sorry, I know it’s early._

_Correct. What’s up?_

_I uh.... Do any of you have... malfunctions... ever?_

_All the time._ There was a pause. _You’re quite young for those._

_Should I wake Peter up?_

_Nooo. We have Walter Workers on call 24 hours. If you go to Robotics Maintenance there’ll be someone to help._

_Oh! OK, thanks._

_Are you... OK? Can you get there on your own?_

Squeaks felt a little shaken, still, but physically OK.

_Yeah._

_Sure?_

_... Yes. Thanks._

***

There were tests upon tests. The softly-spoken night-shift Walter Worker was armed with all manner of screwdrivers, wire trimmers, wire cutters, circuit checkers, and any number of other gadgets around his belt that Squeaks couldn’t possibly identify. He opened panels, checked circuit boards, cleared dust, in search of any physical issues that would cause the malfunction she described. He came up empty.

“Everything looks fine,” he said, a little puzzled, “but nightmares aren’t unusual.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare,” Squeaks pressed, “I was awake at the time. I lost control of my body.”

He shrugged, “well that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t find anything wrong. The only thing I would suggest is a reset, but...” he checked her specifications again in a thick brown file, “your memories are still uploading once a day. If you reset now you’ll lose any memories of today happening.

“I’d bug Mr Walter about that,” he added with a raised eyebrow, “the second the WiFi goes down, you’re going to forget who you are. Nasty design flaw.”

It infuriated Squeaks not to know what was wrong, but the young man had really tried everything.

“Set a reset now,” he continued, “to kick off the next time you power down, after your memory upload. That ought to fix it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Well that malfunction didn’t seem to break anything, so I’m not worried, but I understand that it would cause you distress. If it happens again, come back and we’ll run more checks.”

She hoped it wouldn’t happen again. She’d automatically stored the memory under ‘nightmare’, and the assistant showed her how to protect the file so she couldn’t open it unless she really wanted to. She never wanted to hear Peter scream like that again.

That was just it. The nightmare didn’t even make sense. It simulated the end of the world by Necronaut, she somehow knew, which wouldn’t occur for at least a hundred years. Peter would never even be there.

Unless, perhaps, they _did_ travel forward in time.

Squeaks, rolling away from Robotics Maintenance, furiously put the thought out of her mind. She went to find the robots, to busy herself with something else to do, now that it was a more reasonable hour of the day.

She was starting to understand why they filled their time with such banal activity. They must have so much more that they didn’t want to think about.

***

The weeks passed, and the Autumn weather began to give way to San Diego Winter, which to Squeaks’ annoyance turned out to be very much the same thing.

“But it’s just the same!” she lamented one day to Zero, loitering on a balcony overlooking the land, “at least in England it gets cold. At least you get snow.”

“When does it snow in England?” he asked pleasantly, only smiling wider when she threw him a look.

“That’s not the point. It _could_ snow.”

The days still got shorter, though, and Squeaks occupied herself as much as she could. Whatever had caused her to generate that simulation didn’t seem to repeat itself, and so she worked to try and forget that it happened. After a while, she almost could forget the human part of her, if it weren’t for the fact that in her modelling state, always, still, she was human. And every now and then, The Spine would still press her to see another memory of her past.

And the boat Zero had dragged up the drive stayed where he left it, gathering dust while they repaired the concrete around it, until one day it was simply... gone.

A mustachio-ed robot disappeared at the same time.

Peter explained that he had gone gold fishing, which explained precisely nothing. The Spine, Rabbit and Zero were a little surprised, perhaps, but didn’t really seem to mind. It happened now and again, they explained. Robots come and go as they please. Squeaks found herself sad and hurt that he was just gone.

“But he didn’t even say goodbye,” she’d said.

“Goodbye is very difficult to say, Squeaks. It’s not like he’s never coming home.”

He sent home a postcard from the sea which made Rabbit giggle, but it made Squeaks sad. She missed Hatchworth.

It didn’t take Zero long to notice she was blue, and he proved as good a distraction as any. Sometimes he just talked to her, sometimes he helped Rabbit and Spine in their tomfoolery. Every now and then, he’d ‘pull a Zero’* and break something usually carefully covered by one of the ‘do not touch, Zero’ signs.

It was on one of these days that Squeaks was lying on the floor of the kitchen, solving a jigsaw puzzle**, that Zero burst in and tried to hide behind her, clutching a small black remote control which emitted a rather worrying pulsing blue glow.

Squeaks only just opened her mouth to ask what was going on when The Spine appeared in the doorway with eyes like thunder, stopping himself by gripping the doorframe. His gaze landed on Zero, who was trying to make himself as small as possible.

“Tapioca!” he roared.

The sound Zero made sounded like he tried to giggle and whimper with terror at the same time, which met somewhere in the middle with an oddly nasal squeal. He tried to bury his head under Squeaks’ elbows.

“Come again?” Squeaks tried, sitting up on her elbows.

“Give me liberty, or a bran muffin!”

“Uh...”

Heavy footfalls from down the corridor announced that Rabbit was close behind The Spine, and a moment later The Spine was catapulted forward into the room as she pushed into the doorway.

“I say, where is that rascal?” she said, with a plummy home-counties English accent.

Squeaks looked down at the robot who was busily attempting to tunnel underneath her, “what on _earth_ have you done?”

“I found this! I found a remote, and I pushed a button, and now these two are angry with me!”

“Oh yes, he _found_ it,” Rabbit said syrup-illy, “in a safe in a bigger safe in the shark tank.”

The words ‘we have a shark tank?’ dismissed themselves as irrelevant almost the moment they entered Squeaks’ head.

“So let me guess. This remote control affects your voice settings,” mused Squeaks.

“Just so.”

“The accent suits you, by the way.”

“I rather thought so.”

“So,” Squeaks continued, “you’re stuck in British English and The Spine...” she faltered, and glanced over at The Spine.

“There isn’t even a cabinet in here,” he muttered darkly.

“I haven’t got a clue what that’s about.”

“Why I do believe he’s only able to say Colin Mochrie quotes from the comedy show ‘Whose line is it anyway’,” said Rabbit, now leaning artistically against the doorframe. The Spine opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

“Well I don’t know why you’re hiding under me,” Squeaks said, turning her attention to Zero, “but I think if Spine _was_ going to pull your head off, he would have done it by now. Must’ve changed his mind.”

The Spine met her gaze and silently raised a solitary eyebrow as if to say ‘ _I wouldn’t be so sure about that_ ’.

Ignoring him, Squeaks ushered Zero into helping her up from the ground, where he proceeded to carefully put her between himself and The Spine.

“Clearly if you want Zero you’ll have to go through me, so I suggest you two get yourselves off to Maintenance.” She held out her arms in front of Zero ostensibly in defence, but it was mostly for show.

“If we need to go through you we will, darling,” Rabbit warned, stepping closer with her hands behind her back.

“Does it matter that I’m Canadian?”

“For goodness sake, Spine, use a group channel.”

He rocked slightly on his core, _I’m not after Zero, but I’m not going to maintenance without that remote._

Squeaks felt something against her back which felt very much like a remote control being slid subtly into her back pocket.

 _Ohh no,_ she messaged Zero quickly, _you’re not getting me caught up in this._

_Just walk out the door. I’ll distract them._

_Zero-_

_-go oooon._

Squeaks sighed with the submission of being used as a tool for Zero’s shenanigans.

“Fine. Zero, give me the remote, I’ll give it to Spine.”

“But Squeaks, I just-“

_Play along._

“-don’t want to,” he finished without breaking his stride.

“I’m not going to stand here all day.”

Zero whined dramatically in complaint, while Rabbit began edging towards them.

Squeaks dropped her hands to her sides with a clunk and backed away to the side, keeping her back to Rabbit and The Spine.

“Fine. Help yourself,” Squeaks said, gesturing at the unprotected Zero as the other robots closed in on him. Then she nonchalantly backed to the door once they were distracted with pinning Zero to the floor, and once she was sufficiently out of sight, she leaned forward and ran as fast as her wheels would carry her.

She didn’t make it very far before she heard a yell.

“The little madame made off with it!”

She darted down a side corridor and kept running, as fast as she could, switching down different corridors as often as she could manage. Squeaks could run quietly and quickly on her wheels, which made getaways like this a little easier but, she realised as the sound of metal feet began to get louder, The Spine simply had the advantage of having very long legs.

_Squeaks! Get back here!_

With The Spine close on her tail, as Squeaks turned a corner she briefly considered dodging into a room on the right to try and lose him, but a very quick calculation found that at her current speed, her weight distribution would throw her off and she’d skid head-first into the wall with major structural damage.

But at her current speed, her options were running out. If she kept running, her wheels were due to overheat in five seconds. If she stopped suddenly, she’d likely have a black-out. If she merely continued, The Spine’s closing speed put them at the same location very soon.

 _BLACK-OUT_ , whispered a small voice.

Her calculations accelerated, ignoring the small voice. The three seconds before The Spine would catch up to her stretched out as she analysed any escape routes.

 _CALCULATING..._ the voice continued.

The difficulty was, he made these calculations as well. As fast as she was thinking of ways she could dodge him, The Spine would be modelling his counter-attack. Which did raise the question of how he had managed to fall for something as simple as Zero sneaking a remote control into her back pocket.

_CALCULATION COMPLETE._

She recognised, too late, where she’d heard that little voice before. The Spine’s thunderous footfalls were right behind her, the hallway juddering under his weight.

_LOADING SIMULATION…_

He bowled forward, arms going around her waist in a rugby tackle. The force lifted her off the floor, and he dug his heels in to slow them down, preparing as the two of them fell to the ground in a roll. Squeaks wanted to warn him of what would come next, but there wasn’t time. She thought this wouldn’t happen again.

_OPENING SIMULATION…_

Her body went limp as she lost active control, but The Spine had awkwardly wrapped his elbow around her head to stop it rocking. They rolled, bounced, over the floor, driving up splinters from the ground as their weight blistered the floorboards, slowly skidding to a halt on a rug at the end of the corridor. He grabbed her wrists to stop her trying to get away as he tried to catch her eye to ask where the remote control was, but her head had lolled to the side, staring vacantly at the corridor.

_Where did- Squeaks? Are you OK?_

He released her hands to turn her head, and she could see the concern in his face as her arms clattered uselessly to the floor.

_Squeaks?_

She wanted to reply, but by then the world was gone.

***

_She was running again, but now there was fear. The pumping steps behind her were not those of a robot, but a human. Except there was less consistency. There was a limp, and the grating of bone on bone, like a person who only just held themselves together._

_The sound of the Necronaut._

_He hunted her. He was chasing her down through the Manor, which was grey with age. Plants fought through the walls and she ran through a thick layer of dust. He was gaining on her, somehow._

_She tried to calculate her escape, but was interrupted as an old beam ripped free from the ceiling into her path._

_Her arms went up in self defence, already covered in scratches and dents and corrosion._

_The beam hit her head-first, crushing her skull-plate. Her cameras alerted her as they went offline and everything went black. With no visual feedback, she slammed on her brakes too hard, too fast, and went flying. There was a wall nearby, she knew, and she hit it at speed. In the darkness she felt her arm rip away as she tumbled. She was still conscious as she rattled down the corridor in pieces, but then one last collision severed her connection with her blue core, and there was silence._

_The same empty, sucking silence, back with Nothing._

_She waited. She’d been here before, and this was just a simulation. She would come out of it._

_She waited longer._

_She wanted to be bored, but fear started to set in as nothing changed. There was just the darkness, stretching onwards._

***

*other such examples of pulling a Zero include walking over traffic cones into wet cement to pick up a penny, and writing ‘ok’ in that box on forms that says ‘don’t write in this box’.

**it had been a very slow day that lead Squeaks to the discovery that she could sit and look at all the pieces and then mentally compute which piece went where. To pass the time, she might do a puzzle ‘old-school’***.

***Today’s puzzle was a 2,000 piece jigsaw of Marshmallow standing in a snowstorm, one of many strange games she found in an old playroom.

*****


	18. From the wrong door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks - hopefully - wakes up, but not before Peter makes a discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was going to aim to release a chapter every fifth Saturday, but the words have begun to roll, so I couldn't resist dropping you an extra chapter. You won't see it yet, but in the background I've begun to steer to the story's conclusion, so it's started to write itself a little!
> 
> Once more, my love to my readers and a little wave to those in the Cavalcadium discord. I see you there, dropping kudos. You lovely people.
> 
> 07/01/2018  
> p.s. Happy New Year!  
> p.p.s. If you're paying attention, you might spot an inconsistency from something that happened previously. It's intentional.

Peter was enjoying the quiet solitude of not being bothered. The robots hadn’t needed his help in more than forty eight hours, which allowed him to lull himself into a false sense of security and believe that they might not interrupt his thoughts for a whole week, if he was lucky.

This was just as well, as he was thoroughly confused by a new phenomenon in the Manor.

He had happened upon it while searching the place for a lost screwdriver; he hadn’t been down to these rooms himself in months, but with Zero around there was no guarantee that any object left unguarded would remain anywhere near where it had been left.

This was a small chamber that led off from the cavernous dungeon of the giraffe Delilah’s room. It was mostly empty, save for a pile of plush red chairs stacked in the corner, a few spare pieces of timber, and the sizeable hole in the air that has caught Peter’s attention.

It was oval, tilted forward slightly, and hanging a few inches above the floor. Peter had no idea how long it had been here but, staring at it, it started to worry him. He had seen portals before, and this was not one, for several reasons.

For one thing, he didn’t remember putting it here. Peter had made several blue matter portals before and they were intentional.

Most of the time.

His blue matter portals had a sort of sheen, a blue glowing surface that rippled gently like gossamer in a breeze. This one was dark and still, like a hole had been sliced out of the air.

Blue portals tended to emit a rather soothing, gentle hum, but this was silent.

Crucially, blue portals were a doorway. When they were open, Peter could see what was on the other side, and looking into this all he could see was gray. This was a large, silent, gray hole in the basement, and he didn’t know how it got here.

He was staring at it absently when the elevator outside the room rang merrily, and the quiet was broken by Rabbit’s voice.

“Peter!” she yelled, “Peter, are you down here?”

“In here, Rabbit,” he called back. He started as the hole gave out the slightest crackle as he spoke.

Rabbit’s voice carried across the space. “Thank Walter,” she muttered, before calling again, “we’re gonna need a hand. Squeaks is down.” There was the rattling of several robots getting out of a very small elevator and crossing the walkway towards him.

“Down? What do you mean, down?”

Peter passed through the doorway to the walkway to see the robots, and the answer became immediately evident.

Squeaks was advancing towards him, but she was slumped forward, being pushed along on her wheels by Rabbit. Zero and The Spine were following close behind.

“What happened?” said Peter, jogging over.

“She stopped functioning a few minutes ago,” said The Spine, “rolling down a corridor. I thought something was knocked loose, but we can’t find anything.”

“She’s not responding to messages either,” Rabbit added.

“How long has she been out?” Peter looked Squeaks over. Her cooling fans were still humming quietly, but she was clearly non-responsive. Her sleeves were scuffed and full of splinters.

“Thirty minutes. It took a while to find you.”

“That can’t be good. Take her up to the lab, I’ll be with you in just a second.”

The Spine had reached the door, and looked. His eyes darted to the hole and back to Peter with a flicker of surprise.

“New portal?” he asked, as he walked over to stand with Peter in front of it.

“I’m not totally sure _what_ it is. If it’s is portal, it’s a strange one. I’ll look at it after I’ve fixed Squeaks, though.” He uncrossed his arms and headed back out towards the elevator, which had already been sent back up with the other robots aboard. But before he crossed the doorway, there was a short but sharp hiss, and The Spine yelped. He whipped around to see the automaton shaking his hand like it was scorched.

“What happened?”

“I just touched it, is all. That _smarts_.”

Peter marched back over and grabbed The Spine’s hand; the very tip of his index finger, the pad of black silicone, was flattened and stank of acrid burned plastic. It was like it had been pressed against a hot plate. Peter sighed.

“Don’t touch it again, then. And don’t mention it to the others until I’ve had a chance to work out what it is. Last thing we need is Zero trying to lean on it or something.”

“I’ll try,” The Spine grumbled, “but I don’t know about you studying it down here on your own.”

Before Peter could open his mouth to answer, he heard Rabbit yelling his name from the observation balcony.

“We’ll sort it out later. Let me fix Squeaks first.”

***

_Squeaks was still learning how everything worked in her body, and there were signals she hadn’t yet learned to acknowledge. There was something like a hum, a slow trickle in her mind, that she had not yet noticed because it had always been there, in the background._

_A memory file appeared in her head._

***

Squeaks lay silent on a metal bench in one of the labs. There was physically nothing wrong, and so all they could do for now was wait.

Two hours later, she was still silent.

She almost gasped with the relief when feeling flowed back into her limbs. The simulation gave way to the real world with an almost audible slam as the whirring and beeping of the room battered against her ears. She sat up abruptly to look around, but there was no one else in the room. Given that she had last been conscious on the floor in the corridor, someone must have brought her in. She checked various alerts, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary – except for the fact that she had just been rendered inactive for the best part of two hours, unable to wake up.

 _Anyone about?_ She pinged.

_You’re awake!_

_Squeaky! You had us worried. Are you OK?_

_I...think so._

_Who’s closest to the lab?_ Rabbit asked. There was a pause as various locations were shared.

_Spine, get over there. Make sure Squeaks is alright. I’ll find Peter._

_On my way._

The thought that The Spine was headed to her sent bubbles running through Squeaks’ chest. Although she didn’t have one, the memory of a stomach still got nervous on her behalf.

She wasn’t ready when his heavy footfalls got louder down the corridor. He rounded the corner into the room with a huff of steam venting from between his spines, but stopped short. He hesitated before walking towards the bench with all the confidence of a baby deer.

“Hey. You’re up.”

“I am.” Squeaks choked down a plume of steam as she remembered the events before her collapse. “You’re talking normally again.”

He nodded, “fairly simple reset. You, on the other hand...”

“Sorry you had to see that,” she continued, “and uh... thanks for catching me.”

“Tackling you to the ground, you mean?”

“Um. Yes.” In her memory Squeaks remembered him wrapping himself around her, and even through unconscious eyes she’d seen the concentration in his face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that would happen. We’ve thrown you about quite a lot, lately.”

“What? Oh. Oh!” All at once The Spine’s sad and earnest face made sense. “Oh, you think this was _your_ fault!”

Stood at the foot of the bench like an anxious guest at a hospital bed, he frowned, “well, yes...I thought I’d knocked something loose... ”

“I don’t think so. It’s happened before.”

“Oh! That’s pretty serious.”

“It is?”

He nodded. His shoulders had slowly relaxed from the moment Squeaks told him he hadn’t caused some catastrophic failure. “You really should’ve seen someone about that before now.”

“I did. You told me to see maintenance, remember?”

“That’s what that was? Squeaks, I thought you’d just developed a limb failure or something, not had a total shut down!”

“I didn’t- it wasn’t a shut down.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not really sure. It’s happened twice, now... I was just doing something else and then there was this voice.”

“Right...”

“The same thing happened both times. The voice tells me it’s calculating a model and then... And then I lose any physical control while the model plays out.”

Saying it out loud made her feel like an idiot, especially with the look he gave her.

“You lose control of your body,” he said, slowly, in the same disbelieving tones she always used when the robots were doing something bizarre or outright stupid, “and a voice in your head runs a simulation without your permission.”

“I – yes.”

The Spine sighed, “what sort of simulations are you running that knock you out for two hours?”

“It’s not the simulation. That only takes a few minutes, but afterwards...it’s like I get stuck replaying this memory. And I can’t get out of it.”

“What memory?”

Squeaks faltered, “it’s a little hard to explain. When I first woke up, Peter unplugged my core-”

The Spine’s head snapped up so fast Squeaks was surprised his neck didn’t snap.

“-he did what?!”

Squeaks found herself raising her hands into little protective fists in front of her chest while she tried to work out why The Spine was suddenly so angry, but the look in his eyes when she dared to look was so far from what she expected, staring straight back into hers.

It looked like fear.

“How long?” he asked, the rest of his body still, no longer rocking gently back and forth.

“Not long. 18 seconds.” It still annoyed her that time was never uncertain any more. She knew that there had been a time when she – when _Rachel_ – would’ve looked at a second hand on a clock and, just for a moment, sometimes it seemed like time had stopped. “But Spine, it felt... much longer.

“Somehow I’ve stored the memory, I don’t know how. I’ve looked at the memory file and-”

“-it’s empty,” continued The Spine. “A blank file.”

Squeaks nodded. The Spine began to edge around the bench towards her. He was still cold with fear, but his curiosity was leaking back in.

“I don’t know why I keep seeing it,” Squeaks continued, “but... it’s starting to scare me.” Oil began to film over her eyes.

He nodded silently.

“But you’ve seen it too?” Squeaks found herself filling the silence that The Spine kept laying out for her.

As he opened his mouth to respond, Rabbit’s voice came yelling over the channel.

_Found Peter! On our way!_

The Spine’s eyes widened. _How far?_ He pinged back instantly.

_Close. He was down the next hall._

Squeaks could hear the sound of Peter jogging down the hall, and the bench shook gently under the weight of the robots accompanying him. She went to smile up at The Spine, but before she’d moved, a request arrived in her head.

“Accept it,” The Spine’s voice had dropped to a whisper, “please.”

“What-“

“I’ll explain later,” he hissed, urgently, “but _please_.”

She glanced at the request. _‘Privatise conversation: time-stamped. Replacement: provided’._

The Spine clutched her shoulders and bent to look into her face pleadingly as she hesitated. In surprise she let out a giddy little hiss of steam, and accepted the request.

The Spine sighed with relief, and gave her shoulders a squeeze before letting her go just as Peter rounded into the room.

The accepted code knew what to do. Her data feeds were snipped from the moment the conversation turned towards the Nothing file, until a few moments ago, and tidied away into a folder of their own. She could access the files and remember what had just happened, but now the conversation was private. She was unable to discuss it, unless she and The Spine provided the release codes.

Peter and the others bolted in. They fussed over her, and tested her, and found exactly what had been found before, that nothing was wrong with her. She answered questions in a slight daze, her mind busy elsewhere. She explained about the simulations, but couldn’t discuss the Nothing memory.

All the time, she kept glancing over at The Spine, stood stoically at the back of the pack, now carefully not looking back at her. The Spine, with the glowing green eyes. The Spine, who shared secrets of the future with the others.

What was it about the Nothing file that was so bad that not even the others knew?

*****


	19. Night over San Diego

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks goes in search of The Spine because, damnit, she's got few enough memories without someone else cutting out the ones she DOES have. Spine may have some explaining to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good 'morrow, dear readers. Back to my regularly scheduled chapter release. Ooh I hope you like this one. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I've assumed Walter Manor is on a hill overlooking San Diego. I don't even know if San Diego HAS hills, but I've seen David & Chelsea's hiking vids so... I've kind of worked on that basis. If that's entirely inaccurate then LET'S GO WITH AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE K.
> 
> TLL 20/01/2018

Over the next few hours, The Spine made himself very difficult to find, much to Squeaks’ frustration. She had every intention of getting hold of him as soon as she was off the lab bench, but he had snuck out of the room while Peter was wiping her porcelain eyes to see if it would help.

He had, very carefully, not gone to the Hall Of Wires, and QWERTY didn’t know where he was, which meant he was avoiding the cameras. When it became obvious that he was avoiding her, Squeaks surprised herself by stubbornly deciding she would find him anyway.

She sent him messages, but gave up after three came back undelivered. He must have turned his WiFi off.

Squeaks was better at hide and seek than The Spine was, and after months of practice she knew his technique. She checked his more obvious hiding spots, and when those failed she started to muse on how he would think. Where would he go, where he wouldn’t think Squeaks would look, while not making it evident that he was actively hiding?

Not, as it turned out, the library, nor the loft*. Her third guess was more fruitful.

Peter was with Delilah, doing some work on a cracked piston. Squeaks went down to him in the lift, and as the door pinged open her eyes settled on The Spine who glanced up and suddenly became very interested in what Peter was doing.

“Ow – Spine, there isn’t room for four hands in this panel.”

“Let me; you could burn yourself on that.”

“Which is why I’m wearing these gloves, thanks.”

By offering his help to one of the humans, Squeaks suspected that The Spine had hoped to avoid her by merely being useful. If she couldn’t talk to him in someone else’s presence, and he couldn’t leave because he was working, then he couldn’t be bothered.

Peter glanced up as Squeaks trundled over, “Spine, really, I’m fine here. Why don’t you go and enjoy Squeaks’ company for a while?”

Now that she’d found him, a little part of Squeaks was saddened by the look on the Spine’s face that said yes, he had been down here very carefully avoiding her for the last few hours. Another part of her wanted to know why he’d actively blocked off part of her memory and then vanished before she could ask him why.

“We could go for a walk,” she offered.

The Spine straightened up, leaving Peter hunched over the small panel in Delilah’s side, and looked steadily at the railing next to Squeaks’ head as he thought. Squeaks felt like she could hear the springs in his head, trying to think of a way out, but he nodded shortly instead.

They squashed into the lift to get back up into the Manor. The Spine opted to retract his spines for the trip, but he still had to bend himself oddly to fit. Even so, there wasn’t much room, and Squeaks began closely inspecting the joints of her fingers to distract herself from how close he was.

“You’ve got cobwebs in your fingers,” he said after a moment.

“I took a trip to the loft. It could do with a clean.”

She looked up at his face, and half regretted it. He was closer than she’d realised, almost enough that she could register the heat coming off his face plates. This close, the soft glow of his eyes made it difficult to focus on much else, mentally or physically.

“I’m guessing you wanted to talk,” he said, as the lift slowed to a stop. Squeaks almost fell out when the door opened behind her.

“I – yes. Uh, yes, I did,” she garbled. She sent him a request to unlock their shared memory from earlier, which he rejected instantly.

_Not here,_ he answered, and looked both ways down the long corridor. “Why don’t we go outside? It’s a nice night out.”

“Why not. Give the cooling system a break.”

They walked together to the back of the Manor, chatting idly about Peter’s repairs and Squeaks’ pending memory upgrades.

“You’d left the room when Peter told me,” Squeaks said as they left the back door, “he’s setting up local storage. I’ll need to be asleep for a long while for him to install it.”

“What about your memory in the cloud?”

“I’m not sure. He said it would be wiser to keep uploading memories in case something goes wrong. If my memory files get corrupted, or whatever. But...”

“But?”

“Well, don’t you find it weird having a bit of your brain elsewhere?”

“Not especially. It’s very useful. I can even clear out my head space a little if I need.” He looked her way as they started up the trodden path up the hill, “you’ll find that your head can get quite crowded after a few decades.”

It was pitch black out, and cold enough that The Spine’s fans had already gone quiet. Soon Squeaks could only see the path ahead by her companion’s green light. On one side the hill merged into the sky, its outline drawn by the line of stars, on the other the hill was silhouetted against the amber hue smoking up from the nearby city.

In a moment of quiet, The Spine sent a request back to Squeaks, who accepted gratefully.

“It is _weird_ ,” she said promptly, “having something blocking my own words.”

“I’m sorry.” He seemed fairly earnest about that. “I was caught off guard. I didn’t expect-“

He cut himself off short.

“I’ll be honest, I kind of panicked. I should’ve bluffed, because now you know something’s up and there’s not a lot I can actually tell you.”

“You seem to have a lot of stuff you can’t tell me.”

“I’ve been around.”

“Start with the basics, then. You’ve been unplugged before?”

“I have.”

“When?”

He paused.

“About forty years back.”

“But the others haven’t been.”

“No. I asked the others and when they said they hadn’t I... Well I asked Peter V to make sure it didn’t happen again. _Apparently_ the message wasn’t passed down.”

Squeaks recalled the emptiness, the blackness. “It’s pretty unpleasant.”

The Spine didn’t answer for a moment.

“Yes.”

“So what’s with all the secrecy?”

“That’s where I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!”

“Isn’t that how secrets work?”

“Yes, but... Spine, are you expecting me to never mention this to anyone?”

“Preferably.”

“You _could_ just tell me what’s going on. I won’t tell anyone, you know that.” She sent him a privacy request to demonstrate, which he refused.

“You’ve got a real thorn in your side about knowing everything, don’t you?” he gristled.

“Sorry. I think that happens when you get caged up in someone else’s body and have to work out what world you’re living in,” she said, sarcastically.

They were quiet for a moment while they walked. They were still not far from the Manor, as the path ran parallel to the back of the house. Up ahead, the path began to wind away up a hill.

“I believe...” The Spine faltered. “I believe humans have memories that are too dangerous or painful to recount.”

“Sometimes. You mean traumatic?”

“Yes. What you’re asking me to discuss is one of those.”

“... oh.”

“I just... Look, could you not tell the others about this?”

“It really is that bad?”

“For me, yes.”

As Squeaks went to answer, she felt the flicker of her WiFi dropping out, and stopped abruptly. She reached out blindly to stop Spine in the dark, and managed to grab hold of his shirt cuff.

“Sorry, the connection’s starting to drop out. I ought to stop here.”

“Alright. Do you want to head back?”

Squeaks looked out. From here the city was visible over the hill, a forest of frosty white and warm amber lights.

“No, I might just sit and watch the view for a bit. You can head if you want.”

“I’ll stay.” The Spine held out an elbow to help Squeaks lower herself to the ground, “considering the day you’ve had, I’m not sure I should be leaving you on your own.”

He sat on the ground next to her, legs outstretched and leaning back on his hands, and together they watched the twinkling of the city lights under the stars.

“I never asked,” The Spine said, after a while, “what you saw in these simulations of yours.”

Squeaks let the conversation about their blue matter cores drop.

“I’m not really sure how to explain it. It’s fairly weird.”

“Go on.”

“The first time... The world was burning. The trees caught fire, the sky was glowing... and eventually we all melted.” She couldn’t bring herself to vocalise what she had seen happen to Peter.

“Yikes.”

“Yeah. After I melted, that’s when the memory of getting disconnected started playing.”

The Spine was thoughtfully silent, for a moment.

“What happened in the second one?”

“I was running along the same corridor you chased me down, but it looked really old, like this was years later. It was falling apart, and a wooden beam just came down and smacked me in the head.”

“And then you died?”

“No, it just knocked my photoreceptors out. Then I ran into a wall. _Then_ I died.”

“Cue the disconnection memory?”

“Just so.”

“So both times so far, you’ve died in this simulation.”

“I’m not sure I like your use of the words ‘so far’.”

“You don’t think it’ll happen again?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was hoping not.”

“I could see why.”

There was a moment’s pause, as Squeaks reluctantly thought through the memories.

“I don’t think I’d really thought about it much before but... after you told me about all the Vice Quadrant stuff, I guess I started thinking more about dying.”

“Really?”

“Well if it’s all true, couldn’t we all die?”

The Spine shifted his weight to bring up one leg, foot on the ground, and rest his arm on his knee as he threw Squeaks a faintly bemused look.

“ _If_ that happens, it’s an odd thing to concentrate on. Humans have a life span of about eighty years. You’ve gained a lot of time before you even have to think about that.”

“And yet, I’m thinking about it.” She sighed, “you know the weird thing? These simulation are the only ones where I’m actually a robot.”

“Come again?”

“I go into modelling sometimes. Generate a time or a place or a star system. But I always turn out human.”

“With Rachel’s body?”

“I assume so. I’ve never really seen her myself.”

The thought crossed her mind that Spine had met Rachel, and would probably know, but that would mean sharing her own memories. That seemed to be a path the robots didn’t cross.

“It makes it difficult to forget,” she continued. “I try to just forget that part sometimes and just _be_ an automaton, but then I close my eyes and...”

“-and there’s another you.”

“Another me,” she croaked. She blinked, and rainbows flickered over the white streetlights as oil began to well up. “Out there there’s another me, but her thoughts and feelings are _real._ Another me with real skin, who can leave the house and who remembers more than six months of her life.”

The Spine said nothing, slightly taken aback as she became distressed.

“Sorry,” she garbled, “I... Just...sometimes I forget, and sometimes I just feel like a shadow of her. You’ve seen the memories; she even _feels_ things better than I can. Those huge waves of just thoughts and emotions.”

Her temperature had begun to climb, and in a moment of silence her faceplate hissed with steam.

“Try not to do that,” The Spine said cautiously, “in these temperatures you’ll get troubles with corrosion.”

And that was it. If she was ever human, Squeaks was now the little robot who couldn’t even steam too hard in case she rusted.

She hid her face behind her hands as black tears began rolling over her cheeks, not that she could be seen anyway in the darkness. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was crying, but as she tried to stop she found the tears kept flowing.

An arm reached around her shoulders and pulled her close, and then Squeaks found herself with her head tucked under The Spine’s chin, sobbing gently. He said nothing, but reassuringly rubbed his hand over her upper arm until her blubbering started to subside.

“I think I set you off, there,” he muttered when she started to wipe her face on her shirt cuffs.

“Nasty habit,” Squeaks gurgled.

“Try a sniff,” Spine suggested, “it might make you feel better.”

Searching in her memory archives, Squeaks found the appropriate noise and tried a small sniff. Somehow, it did make her feel a little better.

“I’ve not been fair on you,” The Spine carried on as she tried a snuffle. “I keep asking you to play these memories for me. It didn’t really occur to me that maybe you wanted to forget them.”

“Maybe. But I enjoy playing them for you. I know you like them."

“It’s more than that. You have access to something none of the rest of us have. When I found out you could play those emotions I… I had to know what it was like.”

“You wanted to feel them too?”

“Mm.”

He went quiet, musing something through as he stared out over the lights.

“Why?” Squeaks prompted, feeling there was more. She could just see his fingers tapping on his knee thoughtfully.

“You feel like you were human, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve always wished I could be. Finding out those feelings are what goes through the human mind kind of became… addictive. I wanted to see more.”

“You wanted to experience it.”

“So badly. It’s vaguely torturous knowing that something I could never dream of experiencing for myself I can only access through _this_.” He tapped the top of her head with a rubber-tipped finger.

“Meanwhile it’s in my head, telling me that something I used to have access to I never can again.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Silence descended again as they became lost, each in their own melancholy thoughts. It took a few minutes for Squeaks to realise that her tears had stopped flowing, and that she was still nestled against The Spine’s chest, staring out at the twinkling lights. From here she could hear every tiny gear clicking inside his chassis, and it was so soothing. He was warm and still, and she wanted to put up a hand, to rest it on his heart, or his collarbone, or whatever equivalents he had. Instead she gently and reluctantly pressed her fingers into the sandy ground to rock herself back upright, trying to wipe her face clean of oil as the arm around her shoulder withdrew.

“Pardon the blubbing,” she said, “I’m still trying to work everything out.”

“Squeaks, I’m several generations old. I _still_ haven’t worked it all out.”

She laughed despite herself, “you are _really_ old. But you never seem like it. You’re just... you.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“There’s... a memory I found. I think you’d like to see it.”

“Best not. If you’re trying to forget-”

“-and you’re trying to learn. Maybe we can both do with some in moderation.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s a good one. I think we could both do with the pick me up.”

“Alright. But... Just one. If it upsets you, stop, OK?”

_The real world faded, replaced by Squeaks wandering through a hallway with Rabbit and Peter. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest. Then there was Rachel, the other self buzzing in her mind._

_She was hungry. Tired, but happy._

_“You reckon the arms will stay like this?” Rachel said._

_“Should do. If they fall down they’ll only scratch anyway.”_

_“Good. I’m really peckish.”_

_Peter gave her a long look, “come again?”_

_“Hungry.”_

_“Ah.”_

_There was a rustle, and then Rachel let out a happy little noise, and then there was a new feeling; intense, and wonderful._

_“Nom,” she said simply._

_“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Get back to us when you’re finished munching.”_

_The food was soft and chewy. Herby and sweet, but with occasional bursts of saltiness. Rachel kept making little sounds of pleasure that echoed everything that was going on in Squeaks’ head. It was enough to send tiny sparks down her neck._

_There was a pause, and then there was something else. Something smooth, and rich, and something sharp, sweet and thick, but still those occasional bursts of something soft and salty, almost fruity, coming through. Rachel’s hunger ebbed away, replaced by little popping bubbles of pleasure bouncing around her head._

_She sighed happily, and with a little rattling noise her hands untucked from her underarms and fell gently to her sides._

_“OK, I’m back. Out of food.”_

Squeaks cut the memory short then, and had to run a few shortened breaths to calm the maddening trickles running behind her eyes. The Spine had gone very quiet, and very still.

“That’s what food is like?!” he said, a little breathlessly.

“Ah, that was a little more potent than I remembered.”

“That’s food. That’s _food_?”

“ _You_ can eat.”

“Yes, we’re not supposed to but... not like that. What were you eating?”

“Not a clue.”

“That’s food... You know, I don’t think it ever really occurred to me what I was missing until you turned up.”

She knew what he meant, but the words made her neck prickle.

“Yeah. Want to watch it again?”

They watched it again, and again after that. They drank it in, satiating themselves over and over on the same little snack, until they were giddy with it.

“Seriously,” The Spine chuckled, “ _that’s_ food.”

“You said that already,” said Squeaks with a giggle.

“Yes ma’am. Enough of this. Let’s get inside before people wonder where we’ve got to.”

He stood and held out both hands to help pull Squeaks to her feet**, and they set down the trail back to the Manor. It occurred to her after a few minutes that she was smiling inanely, and that her wheels were gently squeaking.

“When did you last oil your wheels?”

“I haven't. Only when someone’s done it for me.”

“Ah.”

They walked a little way further, and the The Spine stopped. Seeing as he was her only form of light, Squeaks stopped too and waited.

“Something bothering you?”

“I just thought it was fair to tell you, before we get back inside. You’ve been thinking about death?”

“A little.”

“You should know. That’s not normal for a Walter robot.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. Most of the robots aren’t afraid of death.”

He was looking at her steadily, watching her reactions. Squeaks frowned at the strangeness of what he’d said, “Not afraid...”

“We’re essentially immortal, Squeaks. Give or take the end of the world, and we can survive that too, if need be.”

“But the Walters-”

“-the humans die, yes. We hate that. _That_ scares us. But not for ourselves.”

Squeaks thought for a moment, “you said ‘most’ of the robots.”

“Yes. Except for me.”

“You?”

He nodded, eyes gazing into hers. “Just me. And, apparently, you.”

Her eyes darted between his, and she realised her mouth hung open in anticipation of all the questions she wanted to ask, for how this was all at all possible.

“ _Why?_ ” she asked, finally.

He finally looked away, staring off at the Manor. He squinted a little when he thought.

“Going on the evidence,” he said, slowly, “I’d say the disconnection is the main thing you and I have both experienced.”

“But why would that-”

“-it doesn’t matter, right now. I just thought you should know.”

“The others aren’t afraid? They never think about it?”

He shook his head, and started walking again. Squeaks’ wheel made a terrible squealing noise as she went to follow him, “we’ve talked about it. Feel free to ask, but the others are just...” he shrugged, “...not very interested in it.”

As they fell in stride, the path began to slowly brighten from the Manor lights, but not before Squeaks stumbled over a rock she hadn’t seen in the dark, rebalancing herself with a heavy clatter.

“You alright there?”

“Yes, I’m steady. It’s hard to see out here without glowing opticals.”

“They come in handy. Maybe you should get them installed.”

“Maybe I should. I’d fit in a bit more.”

“You fit in just fine. We like having you around.”

By now they were close enough to the Manor that the lights caught their faces.

“Thanks. What do you think, should I get blue ones or green ones?”

“Oh, you’d get blue ones. Peter doesn’t work with green matter.”

“Then how come yours are green?”

“Long story, for another day, maybe.” The Spine looked at Squeaks and snorted, “Wow, do you need a clean up.”

“I look that bad?”

“You _look_ like you need a good bath. Has no one shown you the bathroom yet?”

Squeaks shook her head.

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

***

*as she discovered, trying to brush out the cobwebs from between her joints.

**wheels

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FLUFF. ANGST AND FLUFF. AND CUDDLES AND ANGST. I think.
> 
> Also, Squeaks may never know what's in her tasty, tasty snack. For those of you at home, it was olive bread. Bit of balsamic dip for good measure. I'm uh... I'm going to get something to eat now. Hungry, for some reason.


	20. Welcome to the Spa Workshop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to the Manor covered in dust, oil and cobwebs, Squeaks takes a break, and then we join her for a day in the Manor with Zero and Spine, with a little friendly flirting.
> 
> Meanwhile, Peter has investigations of his own to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I hear your cries. "Little Lady! It's not even Saturday!"  
> Well, you're right. I said I'd update every 5 Saturdays, and it's not even Saturday.  
> WELL I'm busy this weekend, so tough, I'm submitting on a Thursday.  
> Have a story about bath time that no-one asked for (but I get to introduce you to another room around the Manor).
> 
> 22/02/18  
> TLL
> 
> Post-edit:  
> So I HAVE been adding chapters on a 5-weekly basis, but I'm now getting so close to writing up to the end. SO close. So I'm switching it up, and I'll now update every week. That's EVERY Saturday. We're getting there! 
> 
> 16/03/18  
> TLL

In lieu of a door, the room had a clean white shower curtain over the archway, which made Squeaks wonder why on earth it couldn’t just be a door.

Through the curtain was a very small through-room, with another curtain leading to the bathroom. On either side there were lockers and metal benches. It was a changing area, for the robots to undress before going into the bathroom, somewhere where their clothes wouldn’t get wet or dirty. In one corner there was a wicker basket for dirty clothes, and a small glass cubicle contained clean white dressing gowns. Hanging by the inner curtain, there was a light cord.

Squeaks inspected her old, black shirt. It was scuffed and covered in red dust and cobwebs. The cuffs were soaked with oil and clung to her wrists. She shrugged, unbuttoned it, and dropped it into the basket. After some wriggling and carefully lowering herself onto the bench she managed to remove her skirt and put that in the basket too.

She took off the wig, too, and put it in a locker, wondering whether she could acquire some cheap smocks that were less precious to get dirty, and not with sleeves quite so long.

Her hands settled on the goggles around her neck. She hadn’t removed them before now. They had become a comforting presence, always warm to the touch. She left them hung round her neck.

Once unrobed, she pulled the cord, and lifted back the second curtain as lights flickered into life.

It was a large, square room, with white tiled walls and a concrete floor that was angled gently to a drain in the centre. There were no windows, but the room was brightly lit and a few full-length mirrors bounced the light around the room. There were more metal benches dotted around the edge, and besides them were various tools and bottles and piles of cloths, but there were also shower heads and tubs and taps, and in the furthest corner something that looked suspiciously like a hot tub with a large blue cover. The air was warm, and had the sharp smell of hot oil and something medicinal.

All in all, it looked somewhat like a cross between a spa and a repair shop.

There was a file, Spine had said, that every automaton now had stored with their specifications and cleaning procedures. Finding hers proved easy, and a quick read told her what equipment to use and how, and what she should avoid.

Squeaks stood in front of the nearest mirror and balked at the sight of herself. She could see why The Spine had been amused; in comparison to his immaculate appearance, she was practically grubby. Her face was smeared black with oil, mixed with dust where she’d tried to wipe her tears. Cobwebs from the attic were still caught in her cheek-pistons. Her hands and wheel were in a similar state. Dust and pebbles must have caught in her wheels and made them squeal. Oil had dribbled off her chin and onto her chest leaving more mucky black marks.

Anywhere else had only gathered a little dust and started to darken in the groves going down her chassis.

It made her cringe. She had spent the day defiantly searching for The Spine, only to end up bawling miserably at him and looking an absolute state. He must’ve thought her a fool.

Nonetheless, she started by cleaning off her impossium plate. She took a piece of white cloth from the pile on a table next to the mirror, and a bottle of clear cleaning solution which she tipped up onto a pinched corner of the cloth, the bottle making a pleasant little gurgling sound. From there she gently rubbed the cloth over her faceplate in little circles, starting at the steel rim in the top left corner and working methodically across and down to her chin, and moving round the cloth as the grime built up. She had to go over her cheeks again with another cloth to catch the rest of the oil that was smeared there, and carefully work around the delicate groves in her silicone eyelids.

A large, soft brush was perfect for brushing the cobwebs out from her face and hands, and then she used a fresh cloth to clean around the rest of her skull plates, taking another few minutes to carefully scrub in and behind her ears. She wiped down her torso and limbs, but they hadn’t been particularly grimy apart from a line of dust around her waist and the dark oil stains on her chest. There was a row of soft wooden picks of varying thickness, with which Squeaks was able to pry into the little gaps in her jaw and finger joints to remove whatever had caked up in there. There was even a large magnifying glass she could use to get a better focus on her hands. Cleaning everything out with the picks took her a fair while, switching between picks and brushes to wipe off anything she removed.

When she was done working between her fingers, she lifted her hands to her lips to blow on the tips before remembering she didn't actually breathe. Fortunately, a nozzle hung from the wall for just such a purpose, which let her blow strong bursts through her hands. It took a few tries to work out that if she blew _upwards_ through the cords under her chin she could aim any dust out of the gaps in her cheeks, and that she could put the nozzle through any gap around her head, although if she aimed the wrong way from behind her ears it made her porcelain eye-caps rattle.

Squeaks experimentally aimed the nozzle into a seam down her side, and was surprised by the little gust of dust that came out the other side. With a little clatter that travelled down her chassis, a pebble fell out of the bottom cuff of her wheel-limb.

After that she spent a few minutes blowing air into any seams and gaps until the dust and grit stopped falling out. Apparently it was possible for her to remove the plating to get underneath, but the idea of that made Squeaks shudder.

What bothered her less was gathering up a few cloths, picks, a cleaning bottle, a screwdriver and a wrench and sitting down on one of the benches to remove her squeaky wheels. She worked carefully around both sides of each wheel with the picks, and wiped where she’d worked with a cloth. Once satisfied, she put the wheels back on and gave them an experimental spin in the air. They had stopped squeaking, but they were a little stiff.

A number of power drills were on a shelf on the far wall, with a number of round, flat drill attachments of increasing size, and several more that were small and cone-shaped. All of them were covered in soft padding. Squeaks looked at the slowly darkening silver metal of her arms. She could do with a good polish.

It wasn’t until she put one of the spinning pads against her forearm that she discovered that polishing was a pleasant sensation. She buffed over her arm, humming quietly to herself, slowly rubbing away the thin dark-brown layer of corrosion to a mirror shine. When she applied one of the polishing cones to a welded seam running down her inner arm, however, she found out with a little shriek that she was, in fact, ticklish. As it turned out, after noisy experimentation, ticklish along _every_ seam.

She persisted with the larger pads to polish over everything she could reach, with the use of a mirror to check her back, but gave up on the seams after a few minutes of suppressed giggling. If they needed doing, she decided as she purposefully thunked the power tool down on the table, someone else could jolly well polish them while she was asleep for maintenance, which went for the inside of her chassis too. She had no intention of finding out if _that_ tickled.

She took another look in the mirror when she’d finished. The robot that smiled back was bright silver and white, clean enough that undertones of blue bounced out from her impossium mask. Light glinted off every surface as she looked further down. Squeaks had generally never bothered to look at herself without clothes on, as there wasn’t much to see. A generic, nonspecific shape, like a mannequin made of steel, but with a backside one could balance a train on. She rapped her knuckles lightly on her stomach with a muted ringing noise. There was no belly button. Her wheel limb extended as a tapering oval out from her hips to the wheels on the ground.

Her silhouette was reasonably flattering, with none of the wobbly bits humans had, but apart from that Squeaks found the whole array relatively uninteresting. It was just a solid, hollow metal chassis. It would be like looking at a suit of armour and trying to consider it attractive.

Bored of that particular avenue of investigation, Squeaks turned and headed for the large tub in the corner. The cover was thick and sturdy, but it folded in half to aid removal; she lifted one half up and over onto the other, and looked into the tub.

It was full of dark, slick oil, the surface rippling under the warm currents. The oil tub was kept warm, not hot enough to smoke.

With an unnecessary grunt, Squeaks heaved the cover off the top and left it leaning against the wall, and then sat down in the metal swing that hung from the ceiling next to the tub. From her manual, she knew she could be safely submerged up to her neck, but no further. Anything below her chest was proofed against liquids, but she could cause tremendous problems if she flooded her head.

A little array of buttons on the arm of the swing controlled its movement, which enabled Squeaks to lift herself, slowly, up and into the tub.

The oil was deliciously warm. Squeaks lowered the swing carefully until her shoulders were just submerged, and then she lay back against the side and let warm oil seep into every stiff little crevice. She began to flex her fingers experimentally under the surface, and felt the oil between her joints. She’d hardly noticed the tiny movements getting just that little more difficult over the passing weeks.

She closed her eyes and continued slowly stretching and bending her joints, occasionally spinning her wheel in place, backwards and forwards, and let her mind drift.

For a moment, she had been in The Spine’s arms. Out of pity, and only for a moment, but there it was. It was enough to know he was warm to the touch, that his chest hummed softly and constantly. She smiled idly to herself.

He’d preyed on her memory storage. He had some awful, traumatic memory he refused to tell her. Fearing death was strange and different, and he had green eyes that Peter hadn’t given him.

For the moment, wallowing in the warm bath, she simply didn’t care. It was the memory of his arm wrapping around her shoulder that she played over and over in her mind. Just for the moment.

Just for now.

A squeal by the door made her start, and she looked over to see the curtain rippling.

“Mornin’, Squeaker!” came Rabbit’s voice, high-pitched and now very definitely not on the side of the curtain, “night time bath, huh?”

“Yeah,” she called back, “I was getting mucky.”

“Lovely. Just for future reference, there’s a button out here to push if the room’s occupied.”

She sounded faintly embarrassed, which Squeaks found odd. Sure, she was sitting naked in the oil bath, but there was also nothing to see.

“Duly noted. I’ll be out in ten.”

“I can wait.”

Squeaks pulled the swing out of the oil and left herself hanging over the tub while the excess drained away. Another set of microfiber cloths were handily placed on a high shelf, and Squeaks polished herself down when the oil eventually stopped dripping into the tub.

“D’you want to use the hot tub?” she called out to Rabbit.

“Duh. Leave the lid off.”

She brought herself back to ground level, and poked her head through the curtain; Rabbit’s silhouette had appeared against the outer curtain, so she carried on through and wrapped herself in one of the dressing gowns. They were huge, white and fluffy, and she had to tie hers up over her chest to stop the thing dragging on the floor.

Rabbit offered her a huge grin when she emerged, “g-gawsh, you’re all shiny.” Rabbit herself was also adorned in a long white bathrobe, from under which poked two white slippers with noses and bunny ears.

“Like a new penny. Bathroom’s all yours.”

Aside from Rabbit being awake for an early morning soak, no one else seemed to be up, Squeaks discovered walking the corridors. She shrugged, and headed to her room to power down until something interesting happened.

Green eyes...

Peter didn’t work in green matter, Spine had said. He could give her blue eyes, but not green. She pondered what the difference could be; what made The Spine different from the rest?

 _Besides everything?_ Asked a cheeky voice in the back of her head.

She could wonder later. She reached her favourite corner of her room, and shut her eyes.

***

_The trickle continued. The memory of a mid-visit snack made no sense, but Squeaks didn’t notice as the current continued to flow into her mind; it would be like closing your eyes and trying to hear your heartbeat. Always there. Always warm. Always the current, from a part of her she left hung round her neck..._

_Memories formed._

***

The next morning was a gentle one, and Squeaks and Zero made themselves useful to Peter. They helped him switch off the lift to Delilah, so he could carry out maintenance, and then Peter stood and watched while they tried to break in on his request. Squeaks he was less worried about, but Zero had a habit of getting past obstacles he wouldn’t have thought possible.

They took a shipment of metal in the afternoon, huge metal girders maybe ten foot long, and so Squeaks helped Zero bring it in. He could lift about ten of them at once, and Squeaks discovered to her delight that her own lifting capacity was also significantly greater than she would have expected. Her lifting power was impressive, and between her and Zero they discovered that he could pile four girders on her before her wheels sent little beeping noises of distress.

She took the load indoors, and by the time she’d come back to the front door Zero was chuckling.

“Hey Squeakerdoodle!” he called as he heard her rolling back, “check this out!”

He was, technically, carrying four girders. One was in his hands. One was balanced at each edge on its end, and the last was on top, forming a giant square. It was like a huge photo frame, with Zero in the middle beaming at Squeaks.

“But... How in the world...?”

“Pretty impressive, huh?” Zero was practically purring with pride.

“I’ll grant you that.” Squeaks paused as she leaned back against the wall, “but I’m looking forward to seeing how you put them back down.”

Zero’s grin folded, slowly and neatly, into a look of consternation.

“Uum.”

Squeaks waited.

“Uuuuuhm.”

“Trouble?”

Zero turned his head to either side, looking at the supporting girders.

“How in the world...” he said slowly, looking all the world like he’d never seen a girder before, “... did I get these up?”

At which point Squeaks cracked up laughing at the look in his face for about five minutes.

When she eventually stopped laughing, she helped Zero lower the girders to the floor. The top one fell off, but that hardly mattered.

She liked Zero. There was a puppy-dog look in his eyes that simply wiped away any anger at whatever silly things he did. And on the rare occasions he did act on purpose, it only ever seemed to be to make her smile.

When all the girders were safely piled up in the hallway, he walked her around the outside of the Manor, still with the slightly dazed expression of a robot who was still trying to work out how he’d managed what he did.

“And it was just you out here?” Squeaks prodded helpfully, “no one with extendable arms came to help.”

They passed a doorway as Zero shook his head, and then stopped suddenly. He cocked his head, listening to his surroundings.

“Someone’s playing guitar in there.”

Squeaks increased her audio feedback, and then she could hear it too. Very quietly, somewhere lost in the darkness.

“Want to check it out? I reckon that’s The Spine.”

Squeaks bit back an eager smile and opted for a casual shrug instead, “if you like. It’s something to do.”

She rolled through the door, but stopped when she realised Zero hadn’t followed. When she turned, he had an odd little smile on his face.

“Oh, you go on. I’ll catch up with you later.” There was a chuckle in his voice, and Squeaks would’ve asked what the joke was if he hadn’t disappeared from the doorway a moment later.

The room was a large theatre, with burgundy velvet seats on a slope all the way down to the stage. It was dark, and large enough for the sound of a lone guitar to be deadened in the seats. The Spine was sat by the wings stage-left, legs hanging off the front, and his gaze was somewhere in the mid-distance as he played a solemn tune. Squeaks stood at the door, just watching. It had been a while since she’d been treated to watching him play, and he looked very much occupied in his own mind. She made to leave quietly back the way she had come.

But he momentarily noticed her shadow in the doorway, and beckoned her over.

“You’re looking shiny,” he said with a smile when she was close enough that the stage lights glinted off her shoulders. She’d found a sleeveless black dress in a box, which would do until she could leave the Manor and get some clothes of her own. It exposed more metal than her previous outfit, which had covered just about every inch of her.

“Thanks. I don’t know how I didn’t know about the bathroom before. It did me a world of good.”

“Did you get the cobwebs out of your fingers?”

“And the rest.” She held out a hand for his inspection, which he took gently in his own silicone fingers and rotated carefully to look between the joints. “I uh... There was a pebble in my chassis somewhere, which was a bit of a surprise.”

His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist as he turned her hand over, sending a tingle down her forearm.

“You did a good job,” he nodded, “but you shouldn’t let dirt build up in these seams.” He indicated to the line that ran down the inside of her forearm, which was dark against the polished silver either side.

“It’s not that I didn’t try,” she protested, “it turns out my seams are ticklish.”

The Spine, who had gone to take a closer look at her fingertips, paused for a moment, and a smile tugged at his lips.

“You should be more careful who you divulge that to. That sort of information could be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

He raised his head until his eyes met hers, and the green sparkle matched his smile. Playful. Almost mischievous.

“That’s why I told you,” she rebutted, returning the smile, “you’re harmless.” But with his thumb dangerously close to the small of her wrist she withdrew her hand all the same, and as she spoke she thought she might’ve seen his smirk falter before his hands went back to his guitar and he looked up into the wings.

“What do you think of our theater?”

“It’s lovely.” Squeaks looked into the back of the stage, where black curtains hung from every wall and a drum kit sat in the corner, “is that the rehearsal room?”

The Spine nodded, idly strumming a few chords to check the tuning, “Well spotted. A false wall runs along this edge, but we can pull it back to connect the rehearsal room and the auditorium to make the theater.”

“Cunning. So you can do shows right at home?”

“Can do. Have done. Not for a while, though.”

“No?”

“No. These days when you let two hundred fans into the Manor at the same time, a few tend to go missing.”

“How ‘missing’?”

The Spine shook his head, “not _that_ missing. They’d just try to go exploring. Or disguise themselves as a Walter worker, or something, and think we won’t notice. I once found a young lady who accidentally ended up Kazooland when she tried to ride Marshmallow like a horse and he carried her there in a panic.”

“Rabbit mentioned that before. What’s Kazooland?”

Content with the tuning, The Spine pulled back the guitar a little to lean on it. “You read up on the Peter Walters?”

Squeaks nodded.

“It’s an alternate reality. Peter Walter the first – Pappy, we used to call him – created it… kind of by accident.”

By accident. “Of course he did. So what is it?”

“Now that’s a little harder to explain. It’s a peculiar place... Nice, though. We used to go there all the time when we were younger. It’s so weird it’s kinda soothing.”

He paused, idly tapping on the guitar, “for one thing Kazooland is huge. There’s a bunch of inhabitable islands, all a little strange, but the train travels between them all. We should take you to Biscuit Town one day.”

“How come?”

“The Jon is mayor there. And you could meet some of the other fanbots.”

“Fanbots live in Biscuit Town…”

“Almost exclusively. Some have been made in the Manor over the years, but far more were made elsewhere in the world and come to the Manor to move to Kazooland. I think you’d like them.”

Squeaks nodded slowly. It might be nice to meet other oddballs. Or at least see if there were other robots with human memories. Somehow she doubted she was the only one.

“I interrupted. You were playing something.”

“Practicing. Have you heard ‘wired wrong’, before?”

“Not live.”

So he played. He sang, in soulful baritone. The sorrowful tune was that much more melancholy sung alone to a little guitar. Squeaks found herself leaning against the stage, and subconsciously began to hum along.

The Spine stopped singing as he played, for a moment, “you _are_ allowed to sing, if you want to.”

“Hmm?”

“You’re humming harmonies.”

He carried on singing.

“ _Sometimes, I think that I am the only one..._ ”

“ _Who’s been_ _built wrong in the way that he runs...”_ Squeaks chimed in.

Singing in harmony with him was the most wonderful thing in the world. After a few bars it occurred to her that singing was, somewhat literally, what she was built to do. Nothing seemed to compare to it. There was nothing that made her feel so wonderful as making music. Except, perhaps, for floating around in space.

Music was simply enchanting. It was like she was able to talk to The Spine through song in ways words simply didn’t muster. They could be together in music, dancing between the harmonies. She could adore him through song. Even if he didn’t understand the concept at all.

“You have a lovely singing voice,” he said after a moment, setting the guitar back down.

“Mm? Oh, thank you,” she realised she’d drifted somewhere else mentally, and her thinking space had been occupied by The Spine’s eyes for longer than was probably appropriate. “Yours... is nice, too.”

“Well we should sing more often. We could even teach you an instrument if you wanted.”

“I... think I already know one. Do you have a piano?”

“There’s a keyboard on the stage. Need a lift?”

He helped her up onto the stage, and they discovered that yes, she could play. Tunes poured from her fingertips, several of which she didn’t even know she knew.

“Well that’s good to know,” she said, looking in bemusement at her own hands. When did she learn to sing and play?

“I’m with you there.”

Squeaks looked out over the theatre, and imagined it full of people. Surely if they didn’t host people anymore, they hosted fanbots instead.

“If there’s a portal here, why don’t the fanbots come to visit? How come the only automatons I ever see are you guys?”

“Two reasons. For one, Peter VI never quite got the hang of placing portals, so the most recent one was… a little one-sided. It came out about 10 meters above the skyscraper in Preferbia, so no-one could get back through it.”

“The second reason…”

“There isn’t a portal here, right now. We had to destroy the last one when something bad tried to get through from the other side, and Peter hasn’t made another one yet.”

“Oh, well that would do it.”

She wanted to ask for another song. She wanted to ask him about what he’d said the previous day about green eyes. What actually happened was that Zero’s head darted round the door at the back of the theatre, fast enough that he’d clearly not wanted to be spotted, but slow enough that both Squeaks and The Spine spotted him instantly.

 _Did he see me?_ Zero pinged.

“Did you see that?” The Spine asked.

_Yep, he saw you._

_Rats. Sorry._

“I think it’s Zero,” she said aloud.

“I think you’d be right. Zero?” he called out.

Zero peered bashfully around the door again, and gave a little finger wave, “hey, buddy. Hey, Squeaker.”

“Were you looking for us?” The Spine asked, hopping down off the stage. He lifted Squeaks down by tucking his hands underneath her arms.

“Uh... Yes? Yes. Peter wants the girders taken up to lab C3.30. Want to help?”

“Sure, why not,” The Spine shrugged.

They fell into step along the outside of the Manor, and Zero pinged Squeaks again.

_Sorry about that, little buddy._

_Why so apologetic?_

_I didn’t mean to interrupt your ‘alone time’. I just wanted to see how the two of you were getting along._

Squeaks almost stopped walking to give Zero an startled look, and instead nearly walked headfirst into a low hanging stone gargoyle.

_When you say ‘the two of us’..._

_The cutest little couple._

_Zero, we’re not-_

_-yeah, you’re taking forever. But don’t worry, Spine’ll figure it out eventually._

Squeaks face flushed with heat, sending a huff of steam rising from behind her cheeks. Suddenly Zero’s lopsided grin made much more sense.

_I didn’t... I wasn’t sure robots **could** even... ‘figure it out’. _

_Fall in love, you mean? Sure we do._

She glanced up at The Spine, who was staring off into the distance, walking slowly so she could keep up, apparently oblivious to their discussion. He saw her looking, and smiled back down at her. His eyes seemed to twinkle when he really smiled.

 _I didn’t realise I’d been that obvious about him,_ she pinged softly.

Zero responded with a sudden, choked release of hot air that sounded a lot like a stifled laugh, and had to pass it off as clearing dust out from his bellows.

After a few moments of hissing and coughing, he regained his composure.

 _I am familiar with the signs,_ he said flatly. Squeaks slumped a little. She had spent a little more time with one robot than the others, but she didn’t realise she was being used as a spectacle. It was _embarrassing_.

 _Oh, come on now!_ Zero said, turning to see that she looked thoroughly put out, _there’s nothing wrong with a little mecto amore. Just give him time. He’ll come around._

She looked around at Zero as they crossed the front doorway, who gave her an amiable grin. But, for good measure, also a eyebrow waggle and a wink.

***

Now that the area was secure, Peter had time to look properly at the new portal-type object hanging in the basement. He’d brought down a lab bench covered in tools to investigate, and pulled out a red chair from the pile in the corner, putting it down right in front of the object. He had disabled the elevator down for anyone but him, and sent the robots on an extended walkaround with girders. It should have bought him a couple of hours.

The last portal he’d made intentionally had come out too far above Kazooland, but after it had been open a few months the most hideous things had started to come through, and he had been forced to close it. He needed to check whether this one was as bad, and whether he had to close it urgently.

It still hung in the air, gray, dull and silent. That was until he breathed thoughtfully, at which point it crackled.

Air seemed to disturb it. Peter picked up a pipette off the side and squeezed it near the surface, which hissed and crackled again. He paused and brought the pipette closer, and tried again; a spark crack, and this time there was a tiny snap of light. He sucked the air back up again, and brought it up to his eye, where it seemed to crumple for a moment.

The air seemed to be thinner nearer the hole.

He spent a while checking for any and all readings from the hole itself; nothing was passing through this way, that he could tell. No light, no sound, no air, no radiation, no signal of any kind. There seemed to be no weight or gravity to it. It had no electricity to it, and no charge. It didn’t radiate heat, or pull heat from the room, which given how it had melted The Spine’s finger was somewhat surprising. In fact, it hardly responded to any equipment, save the pipette. He shone a light on it, but he might well not have bothered. It seemed to absorb the light completely; there was nothing on the wall behind, but even with the torch almost touching the grayish hole, it looked just the same. No light bounded back.

It just seemed to be... Nothing. A big hole of nothing hanging in the air, giving nothing out and taking everything in. If it weren’t for his own eyes, Peter could have been convinced that it wasn’t even there. Just nothing.

Perhaps, he thought, it was a one-sided portal. Half a door. Which would mean it simply didn’t come out anywhere.

However, Peter had not learned nothing from having to walk around with a keyhole covering what he possessed for a face. He got hold of the longest thing he could find, which happened to be a long wooden dowel, stood as far away as he could with his arm stretched out before him – and prodded.

The hole crackled again, almost in protest, and didn’t seem to resist the prodding in any other way. The stick seemed to go straight through. But the smell of burning affected Peter’s nose, and he flipped the stick around. The end was flat, and charred black. It had simply burned away in contact with the surface. Peter stood closer, and prodded again. The end of the stick practically evaporated away, but a little pool of soot began to gather on the floor below.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be hot enough to instantly destroy silicone and wood. Peter snapped off the end of the dowel, and tried throwing it into the grayness.

There was a furious crackle, and the whole severed piece disappeared into smoke and ash.

He tried other things, aiming an infrared thermometer at the Nothing to see if it heated up when something came in contact. A piece of paper curled up into smoky ashes. A boiling tube formed a glowing puddle of glass on the floor. A Bunsen burner collapsed into molten metal, which oozed over the growing pile on the ground. None of it registered any sort of temperature change for the Nothing.

Everything simply either combusted or melted. Peter tested the mass of what came back off the portal and confirmed he’d neither gained nor lost mass in the process, accounting for the oxygen lost in combustion reactions. He tried as many different elements as he could, ducking behind the desk for the more volatile substances, but everything did much the same thing. He tried a hot dog, from a jar in the desk, in place of his own finger, and was somewhat glad he did so when the whole thing decayed to black charcoal on the floor. A splash of water simply evaporated into angry steam.

He tried sending messages into it; speaking (even if that felt a little silly), light signals, sound pulses, playing music... Nothing seemed to go through. After a while he worked out that the light pulses reflected straight back into the laser, and any sound reflected right back.

It was perplexing. Any solid matter was heated beyond recognition. Any light or sound was reflected perfectly.

He sighed, logging his findings and setting up observation equipment to watch the thing while he was away. If it did anything else interesting while he was away, he wanted to know. Whatever this thing was, it was destructive. He’d have to bar the lift until he knew what to do with it; and telling everyone what was down here would only have Zero down in a flash poking the thing.

And then Zero would need a new arm. It wasn’t worth the bother.

He looked back at it as he left, big, dull and gray. There was a substantial pile of black-gray muck underneath now, slowly oozing over the concrete floor.

He’d clean it up later.

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could've made that whole chapter a lot shorter by just having Spine say "Anyway, here's Wonderwall".


	21. Please try to remember (it's natural for a thing like me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks has been confined to the Manor up until now because her brain is partly outside her head, so she can't move out of WiFi range. Fixing her capacity will take a little time, and we might see what happens when she's forced to hang around in her own head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not very good at this. I said every five weeks and I've stuck to that... once, maybe? Oh well.  
> Over here in the background, I've been writing and writing and I'm so nearly done. I did some checking and realised if I stuck to my currently schedule I'd be sitting on a finished story for about half a YEAR.  
> Which is why I'm shaking things up, one last time, and chapters will now be released weekly. Every Saturday! Goodness.
> 
> Thanks everyone for coming along for the ride, I really hope you're enjoying the story. Bonus points if you spot the foreboding I've snuck in the chapter.  
> 17/03/2018  
> TLL

Peter scheduled Squeaks’ downtime for not long after that. He requested a couple of days, and he’d learned his lesson enough to sit her down and talk through what he needed to do, which was, in short, brain surgery – or somewhere between that and building a PC tower.

He had to replace her current memory capacity with one that was much larger, which meant rewiring most of her chassis and her head to fit it in, download all her previous memories into the new storage, and sort out her programming to make sure memories could flow to or from her cloud storage as she required. He explained, as gently as he could manage, that it would require mostly taking her apart before putting her back together.

“I’ll lock down the lab in the process,” he explained, “the automatons react very poorly to walking in on a robot in pieces. And I can’t put you under coma-code for this one because... well, about halfway through proceedings I’ll not have a port to connect the code to.”

“So how do I know when to wake up?”

“I’d say specifically, don’t. When it’s safe to do so, I’ll boot you up, but in the meantime just don’t.”

Squeaks nodded, but the more Peter described the more nauseated she became by the prospect of becoming pieces on a table.

“What will happen to me in the meantime? Will I have memory failures?”

“You shouldn’t, if I’ve planned this right. And believe me I’ve planned.”

QWERTY acted as an anaesthetist of sorts. Squeaks would be connected throughout the upgrade to QWERTY, who could check on her – what could best be called – ‘life signs’.

“QWERTY will let me know the instant she loses contact from you, and she’ll provide a communications channel between us if needed.”

“And my malfunctions?”

“They don’t appear to cause any trouble if you’re already powered down. But if one happens, at least I could properly monitor what’s going on this time.”

That had been that. Squeaks grew nervous the more Peter explained, and she found herself resisting the temptation to drop in on everyone... just in case she didn’t see them again. But Peter assured her she would be fine. This wasn’t dangerous. She would be fine.

It was difficult to voluntarily close down all her programs, close her eyes and shut down, lying flat on a bench with one arm defensively across her chassis. She felt scared, and alone. The upgrade would give her freedom to move beyond the confines of WiFi, but in the meantime she silently wished she’d asked someone to hold her hand as she pulled herself under.

In the darkness, she waited as she was told.

There was a new noise, one that fuzzed, and then QWERTY was on the outskirts of her mind.

She was almost suspiciously non-irritating. QWERTY’s presence was usually one that grated on the nerves, but now she was required to be genuinely useful and just spoke to Squeaks every few minutes to make sure she was still in contact.

“STILL THERE, SQUEAKS?” she buzzed.

“I’m still here,” Squeaks murmured. She wasn’t allowed to power down in case something went wrong, so instead, she slowly drifted into her modelling space.

“I’LL NEED TO TEST YOUR MEMORY EVER NOW AND THEN. MEMORY TEST: WHEN DID WE FIRST MEET?”

“When I was Rachel. In the Hall of Wires.”

“CORRECT.”

 Perhaps she’d visit Andromeda today.

***

Peter, for once, was being careful. He’d set up white curtains around him so that anyone walking by couldn’t see the table. He didn’t like to see a robot dismantled, but the robots hated it. Squeaks was mostly intact, but he’d opened up her chest and head to reorganise everything. Her impossium mask was removed and placed – face down – off to one side.

It had taken hours to get this far, but he had been uninterrupted apart from QWERTY reporting regularly that Squeaks was still present in her own mind. She had to test Squeaks occasionally to make sure no memory gaps formed.

But with the new memory capacity in place, Peter collapsed into a chair to watch while all Squeaks’ memories downloaded into her body. He could put her back together when that was done, but for now he could do with the rest.

“QWERTY? You can start the memory download now.”

“COMMENCING.”

QWERTY had lowered a screen over the curtains around the lab bench like she was peeking over them. The smiling face flickered off, and was replaced with a display of Squeaks memory storage so Peter could watch it all move.

“That’s odd,” he said blearily, “Squeaks usually keeps her memories tidy.”

The usual memory files were there, and more besides, sorted simply into subfolders. But there were more memories at the highest level, unsorted. They weren’t even in the ‘unsorted’ folder.

Peter looked closer.

***

Pluto was dull but sweet. Squeaks had returned from Andromeda and visited the rocks of the Solar System. Phobos had been a personal favourite.

“HI SQUEAKS,” QWERTY chirped.

“Still here, QWERTY. Got a question for me?”

Squeaks was sat on Pluto with her knees tucked up under her chin. These days she enjoyed the excursions which, for some reason, still allowed her to have legs. She was staring off at the sun, which wasn’t all that much brighter than the other stars from out here.

“I DO. HOW DO YOU GET TO DELILAH’S HALL?”

“Two ways. Either you take the lift down to the lower deck from the entrance hall, or follow the hall up the spiral staircase to the organ loft. It’s through there.”

“CORRECT.”

QWERTY went quiet again for a while, leaving Squeaks with Pluto’s sky.

She had been thinking about a recent conversation with The Spine. He worried about death, he had said, and the others didn’t. Squeaks had thought of asking them, but it hardly slotted into conversation. An afternoon session of helping repair the brickwork at the back of the Manor hardly lent itself to the question ‘so what do you think happens when you die?’.

Driving her thoughts from the morbid, Squeaks thought instead of the other thing The Spine had said. Peter didn’t work with green matter.

She thought that was strange. If blue matter was such an effective power source, why didn’t he investigate other matter sources? And in that case, who made the eyes for The Spine and Rabbit, and why did they keep them if Peter didn’t know how to repair them? It seemed nonsensical.

Pluto disappeared as instead Squeaks brought up a web browser. If Walter Robotics didn’t deal in green matter, then presumably another company did.

“ME AGAIN, SQUEAKS.”

“Still here, QWERTY. Fire away.”

“WHEN DID THE SPINE REQUEST TO HAVE YOU PERMANENTLY SHUT DOWN?”

Squeaks froze.

“...what?”

“WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO REPEAT THE QUESTION?”

“QWERTY, what are you talking about?!”

“IF YOU DON’T RECALL, SHOULD I LET PETER KNOW?”

“That never happened!”

“IT DID.”

“I think I’d remember hearing something so horrible!”

There was an ugly pause.

“AH. YOU WEREN’T THERE.”

Squeaks felt like her world had just gone grey.

“Spine wants me shut down?” she asked weakly.

“HE MADE A REQUEST, BUT YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY FORGET I TOLD YOU.”

“I – forget?! Are you kidding me? When did this happen?”

“I CAN’T SAY.”

“QWERTY...” Squeaks felt weak. The Spine… He was sweet and funny and clever and... all this time, he thought so little of her?

Her eyes filled up with tears. She’d started to feel like she actually fit in. Perhaps she had been wrong...

“Squeaks? Are you in there?” Peter’s voice echoed into her mind from somewhere above.

For a moment she was speechless, opening and closing her mouth silently, but the words eventually came.

“Are you shutting me down?” she whimpered. Her voice was shaking.

“Huh? No, I’m stocking you with memory like I said. I need to ask you something-“

“-Why does Spine want to shut me down?” she cut in, calling out above her. Tears had started to roll over her cheeks.

“What? He doesn’t!”

“QWERTY said he requested to have me shut down! What’s going on?!”

Peter paused, and muttered something she couldn’t hear. It took a moment or two for her to realise he was talking to QWERTY where she couldn’t hear them.

“Will you stop talking about me behind my back and explain what’s going on?! Did you put me on this table to put me down? Is that it?!” Squeaks found herself screaming into the aether. She was terrified. Was she that much a burden? She had been an accident, maybe The Spine had finally convinced Peter to decommission a waste of resources. It had never occurred to her that they could do that; she was just a pile of metal. They only had to turn her off if they wanted to.

But she didn’t _feel_ like a pile of metal. She felt like a living being.

Peter sighed and Squeaks heard keyboard keys clacking. In a moment his keyhole-covered face appeared on a grainy screen in the of her, stood in front of a white curtain.

“Squeaks, calm down. I’m not shutting you down. Spine asked a while ago, and I said no.”

“So he did ask.”

“He did. But he wasn’t himself. He didn’t mean it.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, months ago. You’d only just woken up.”

“Wait, I remember this... You told me he’d said something when he was angry. Is this what it was?”

“... Yes. But Squeaks, you have to understand it was said in anger. He didn’t mean it.”

“He told you to _shut me down._ ”

“That’s out of context.”

“So why did he say it?”

He didn’t answer her question, “Look, I’m sorry you heard about it this way, and if I could smack QWERTY I would, but there’s a more pressing issue right now. We need to come back to this.”

Squeaks wasn’t willing to let it go, “how _were_ you planning to tell me?”

“Honestly?+ I never thought it would come up. And you didn’t need to know. What’s the first thing you remember?”

“I – what?” the question seemed bland, almost conversational.

“What’s your earliest memory. Chronologically.”

“Really. I get told that The Spine wants me dead and you’re more concerned about my recollections,” she said dryly.

“Please check.”

“Singing,” she said shortly, “with a quartet.”

“As who?”

“Me.”

“ _Which ‘me’._ ” Peter’s tone got sharper.

Squeaks found herself wanting to huff at him, “Rachel.”

“Where?”

“No idea. Someone’s living room, probably.”

Peter paused. He looked worried.

“A while ago you powered down for over a week. You remember what you told me when you woke up?”

“I remember.”

“You told me,” Peter continued, “that you’d sorted all your memories, and there were none before I made memory storage for you. You told me that you had no memories that were exclusively Rachel’s.”

He was right. She remembered telling him just that. She remembered the hollowness of discovering she was only Squeaks, that any trace of Rachel in her head was a construction.

“But... I remember singing. Carla made cookies...” How could she not have remembered before? They had sung for hours, but then there were cookies and rehearsal gave way to munching happily, sat cross-legged on the carpet and giggling like school children.

“What’s happened this time?” she asked. Clearly, Peter had found something.

“I found a bunch of memories, unsorted. When did you last check your storage?”

She hadn’t needed to, not for a while. Memories seemed to file themselves these days, and she didn’t have to look at the folders to open a memory.

“A while, I suppose...” she opened the folder now, and looked; there, at the very highest level, were about a hundred small memories. “What the... ”

“They’re all downloaded since you woke up as you. And they have the weirdest naming conventions, but more importantly I can’t play them.”

“You tried?”

“Only when I didn’t understand the format. The computer has no idea what they are.”

“What do you think they are? Have I got a virus or something?”

“I don’t think so. You’ll know better than I what they look like.”

Squeaks still had tears running down her cheeks, but touched one of the memories to see what was there.

The world enveloped her and she was on a train, her mind a gentle, bored hum.

She tried another one. She was sat at a bar table, a hand wrapped around a glass of red wine, and threw her head back laughing. She was drunk, and didn’t care. Her brain swam.

Another; a baby was howling, and the baby was in her arms, red-faced and screaming like nothing had ever been so bad as being tired.

A new pair of boots, that looked good but the right one was too tight...

A visit around Walter Manor, munching on olive bread because she was hungry...

A ride down a hill on a bicycle, interrupted by a van she didn’t spot...

Scratching the ears of a small tabby cat on her lap...

“These are Rachel’s.” There was no uncertainty in her voice. Just confusion.

Unpacking a cardboard box full of books...

A face in the mirror, mouth slack, trying to apply mascara. _Her_ face. Rachel stared into the mirror, and Rachel looked back. Blue eyes, slightly buggy, a button nose and chapped lips, and long oak-coloured hair.

_Rachel’s face..._

“They’re all Rachel’s,” she repeated, “I don’t understand. These weren’t here before.”

“I’m not sure I get it either,” Peter said slowly.

“This... can’t be possible, surely?”

“Apparently it is. I should look into this further, but for now I really should put you back together again. Are you OK for now?”

“No,” Squeaks answered honestly. “but... You’re right. Get me mobile again. Please. I’ll wait.”

The channel clicked silent, but after a moment Squeaks opened it again, and called out.

“Do you mind if I keep this open? If you’re going to be a while... I don’t think I want to hang around in here alone.”

There was a heavy metallic clunk. “Sure. Just... I’m concentrating, so I might not be very talkative.”

She waited quietly and watched a couple more memories. She remembered pushing her feet into the sand on a cool, sunny beach. The sea was too cold, and the air blew a chill, but she still smiled at the feeling of sand pressed damply between her toes. Someone was busily digging sand behind her, but she ignored them and watched the ocean waves until the cold set her feet into cramps.

Squeaks stopped watching abruptly. She was happy here. She had just begun to trust the body she had, and now... now to remember all this. She remembered joy and fear and hot and cold and hands and feet. The happy absurdities of the Manor began to fade into the wonderful mellowness of simply being human.

“I was so angry with you,” she said softly.

“Any time in particular?”

“When I was Rachel. When you made me Squeaks.”

“Oh, that,” Peter’s voice faded out behind the noise of a screwdriver for a few moments, “of course you were angry. But you _weren’t_ Rachel. You worked it out and told me you were Squeaks.”

She didn’t say anything for a while. She was sat watching the memories queued up like books before her, and thinking. She had been so utterly sure at the time. There _were_ no other memories. Squeaks had been Squeaks. And now she had formed more, forwards and apparently backwards. How much of a person did you have to be before you _were_ them? How much of a person did you lose before you stopped being them?

“What makes you ‘Peter’?”

“That’s the name I was given.”

“Yes but... You started out as a baby. You learned to be you. When did you _become_ Peter?”

“That,” a clatter, “sounds like philosophy. I’m no good at philosophy.”

A book faded into existence. Squeaks reached out to open it, and remembered something she hadn’t before. Crying. Great, sobbing tears, beating her fists against the chest of someone trying to comfort her. Distress, and misery. The memory had uploaded into her memory files before her very eyes.

“But what if a robot went the other way?” she thought aloud. “If a human starts as a baby, what if a robot starts off empty and gains the same memories? What would that make me?”

Peter paused audibly, “that would make you Squeaks, I think. With bonus memories.”

“I’m finding more memories,” she said, letting go of the book, “I’d not noticed before, but Rachel’s memories are slowly downloading into my head.”

“Hmm. Is that what’s going on?”

“Apparently. A new one just appeared.”

Peter went quiet, muttering something about cooling fans. Squeaks put down the books, and retreated slowly into one of her starry nights.

She didn’t want to be Rachel anymore.

She didn’t want to be Squeaks.

She didn’t want to know why The Spine wanted her gone.

For now, it was simpler to want the stars.

*****

Hours later, her body was still taking shape on a metal table, and the universe had kept her occupied for only so long. Squeaks tried to ignore the new memories, tried to ignore what QWERTY had told her, and instead looked for something different. A phrase had rolled itself around in her mind, and in terms of distractions it did well enough. She would have given it more attention earlier had QWERTY not interrupted.

The Spine, whatever he thought, said that Peter didn’t work with green matter.

That meant _someone_ did.

The browser was opened again, and this time, she searched for green matter. Most results were for ecologically friendly thinking, but a website about halfway down the page caught her attention, and she followed into the site. It was a clean, white advert for research candidates.

‘ _We are looking for voluntary candidates who would be willing to receive green-matter integrated organs transplanted for a temporary period of time (3 weeks) for a research project; namely photoreceptors, memory units, or oil transfusers. This is suitable for any robotic candidates built in or after 1950; most construction types are being considered, please inquire below if you feel that you may be suitable. We cannot accommodate human or android candidates. We apologise that there is no financial reimbursement for this trial.’_

She looked around for more information in the site, but there was nothing more. The research company appeared to work on behalf of another robotics group, whose logo was just a big green ‘B’, but it wasn’t anything she’d heard of.

Green eyes...

There was a response form. They wanted candidates to give green eyes for a few weeks. Squeaks would be able to leave the grounds of the Manor from the very moment she woke up.

Maybe this was as much a distraction as she needed. Maybe she just needed to get out of the Manor, take part in a trial for a few weeks, see a little of the world.

And, just perhaps, it would give her a little common ground with the others. Maybe if she really liked green eyes, she could keep them.

She filled in the response form with all her relevant specs; size, age, manufacturer, core-type, location, availability date… She even discovered she had a serial number filed with her handbook*. She sent it out into the world, and tried to think of something else to do until she had a response.

Except that a response only took an hour. She’d been listening to Peter describing her reconstruction as she waited when something came back.

The research team expressed interest, but requested a call before she went out to have optics installed.

 _Why not now?_ She sent back simply.

 _Now works_ , came the swift response.

Squeaks disconnected her link to Peter as her head began to buzz with an incoming call, which she answered almost instantly.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is that Squeaks?”

“That’s me. You’re calling from the research centre?”

“I am indeed. My name’s Phyllisia, I'm the scientist running this project. Thanks for your contact form, I just wanted to talk through it with you. We don’t like to start personalising expensive optics until we’re sure we’ll be fitting them.”

It was unusual how the woman pronounced her name. ‘Phyll-i-see-a’, rather than ‘Phyll-ee-shah’.

“That makes sense. What do you want to know?”

The woman on the other end chuckled mildly. Her voice was light but certain.

“Well for starters you’ve got a British accent. Your form says you’re a Walter Robotics creation… they don’t usually give their ‘bots foreign accents.”

“My voice and mannerisms are adopted from those of an English woman,” Squeaks explained briefly.

“Alrighty then. I need to make notes this end, I hope you don't mind.” The phone line went quiet apart from the scratching of a pen. “So you're one of Walter’s bespoke models, I assume? I didn't recognise your serial number.”

“I'm not sure what you mean…”

“Walter Robotics mass-produce service robots, but I believe the current CEO also designs bespoke models if the client has an unusual requirement. Oh, and he tinkers with experimental models when it takes his fancy.”

Squeaks was amused at the thought of the lanky, passionate, impulsive Peter being thought of outside the Manor as a ‘CEO’. But she supposed if Walter Robotics was a company then _someone_ had to be in charge of it.

“I wasn't designed for a client, as such. I guess I'd count as experimental, in that case… Is that OK? I can provide my specs.”

“Oh, I shouldn't need those - but gosh, a Peter Walter experimental! That _is_ exciting!”

Squeaks smiled to herself as Phyllisia began making quick scrabbling noises on her paper.

She asked more questions about Squeaks’ general build, but they sounded more out of benevolent curiosity than actually being required for the research project. Either way, Squeaks answered her to the best of her abilities.

“Wow,” Phyllisia said breathlessly when Squeaks got around to explaining that she was receiving the call from an operating table, “such impressive technology. I'll be honest, I've not had the honor of talking to a resident Walter robot before. You must've met the originals then?” she asked, almost in awe.

“The originals?”

“Rabbit, The Spine? They're kind of legendary in the AI world, but most folks never get to meet them.”

“Oh! Yes, I know them. They’re here, and Zero is too.”

“Z _ero,_ ” there was a laugh, “now there's a name I've not heard in a while. He used to be all over TV.”

“He's great. Though he's a bit… um…”

Phyllisia had to take the phone from her ear to laugh heartily, “say no more! I watched Zero's House, I know what he's like.

“But tell me,” Phyllisia’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper, “is The Spine as handsome in real life as people say?”

Safe in the comfort of her own head, Squeaks felt herself blush heavily.

“He's very nice,” she said defensively.

“ _Kittens_ are ‘very nice’. Come on now, what’s he like?”

“Well, yes, OK, he's good looking. But he is also charming and friendly.” _Even if he doesn’t want you around,_ she added to herself. Still, she hoped she sounded reasonably nonchalant.

“I did hear that, too. Anyway,” the pen began scratching again, “the girly chatter can wait until I get to meet you. I think you'd be a great asset to the project, but I'm sure you'd like to know we're asking for.”

“I imagine so.”

“It's a trial, and as such there's not a lot I can tell you beforehand without affecting the outcome. We'll make up some green matter optics to your specifications, fit them for you, and ask you to wear them for three weeks while you continue your normal activities. We are looking for what differences you perceive from wearing them, so for the sake of the trial we’ll need your appearance to be physically unchanged. It might affect results if you're treated differently by how you appear. Could you send details of your current optical setup? I can replicate your eyes as best I can.”

“I can do that - the eyes need to be secret, you mean?” Squeaks spirits sank a little. She'd started to get excited about coming back to the Manor and showing them off as a surprise.

“Only for the duration of the trial. I'll be honest with you, though, if we need to make them to match your specs, we can't use them again after. If you like them, you can probably keep them.”

“Well that’d work for me.”

“Not a problem. What optics have you got now?”

“CCDs with porcelain caps. My eyes are painted blue.”

“You should find these an improvement, then. Especially if you're a fan of replicating human impressions, because the irises respond to external light.” Phyllicia paused for thought, “Walter’s AI is just extraordinary, but I think our visual work is ahead of his. You'll be impressed.”

“Did your company make The Spine’s eyes, then?”

“I… I'm not sure. That was before I was born.”

“Fair enough. But what's the difference, then, between Peter’s blue optics and your green ones?”

“More than I can tell you, I'm afraid, if you're going on the trial. But then, you've got better sources than me. If The Spine’s had both, he'd be able to say.”

Phyllisia gave her details of the company location, and contact details for Squeaks to send more information to. She'd get back in touch, she said, to arrange installation when the eyes were ready.

“Very nice talking to you,” she said as she was hanging up, “I look forward to meeting you in person.”

The call had barely disconnected before QWERTY appeared again.

“HOW'RE YOU GETTING ON, SQUEAKS?”

“Oh, the usual. Cabin fever. Existential crisis. Amazing what you get done when you're unconscious,” she answered dryly.

“WE'RE READY TO WAKE YOU UP AGAIN. BUT WE SHOULD RUN TESTS FIRST.”

“Test away.”

There were clicks and whirrs and buzzes. Electrical currents were forced through each limb. Her memory was tested for any corrupted files. QWERTY threw a few more questions at her to randomly test her memory, but Squeaks found the process uncomfortable this time. Her first memory was not waking in a laboratory. There was more to remember now. And Spine…

She wanted to ask him about what he had said, and all at once she didn't. She found herself half expecting QWERTY to inadvertently tell her something else she wouldn't want to know.

By the time her eyes were open, she was all the more unsure again.

The coming days didn't promise to be comfortable.

***

_Several months ago…_

Peter had managed to pull himself clumsily out of his blue matter suit and left it on the floor outside the lab where he'd been working on Rachel’s virtual… on the newly awakened Squeaks. He was all in favor of waking her immediately, but first he wanted to find out why Spine was in such a foul mood.

He headed purposefully to the Hall of Wires, grasped the handle and threw the door open. The Spine stood, arms crossed, at the console, evidently deep in conversation with QWERTY, until his head snapped to the door and his hand came down purposefully on a button on the dashboard. His eyes were still acidic fury as the screen went blank.

“Shut her off,” he said simply.

“Spine-”

“-shut her off. Recycle the blue matter. She's brand new, she wouldn't even know.”

“Listen to yourself -”

“Shut her _DOWN,_ ” and this time he was shouting again. He had slowly stepped away from the console and towards the door, where Peter still held the handle almost defensively. QWERTY’s eyes followed him, calculations closing rapidly on her screen as Peter watched. He paused while another angry plume of steam hissed from The Spine’s plates.

“Spine, she'll be fine. I've checked and she can be perfectly functional.”

“You're not listening.”

“Neither are you. There's no reason to pull apart a well-built robot.”

“You'll be putting her through hell.”

“What kind of hell, Spine? If life is that foul for you, maybe you should’ve said something before!”

“It's not-” The Spine bit off the end of his sentence, “- I can explain later if I must. But if you decommission her _now_ you could disassemble her core-”

Peter didn't like the way he said ‘decommission’. The Spine knew as well as he did that he might as well say ‘euthanise’.

“I can't reuse the blue matter, Spine, it already coalesced.”

The Spine stopped arguing. The anger drained from his eyes, replaced by fear.

“ _Already?_ ”

“The core was installed about a month ago, and I used it to combine with Squeaks _and_ with Rachel - apparently. It's merged with her already, if I tried to remove the blue matter now I don’t think I’ll be able to reuse it.”

The Spine looked back at him wordlessly for a few moments, and glanced back at QWERTY looking for some kind of answer. She merely flickered her screens in way of a shrug.

“Leave her be, then,” he said, somehow defeated, “but for Walter’s _sake,_ Peter, _stop_ making blue matter bots until you've researched this properly.”

“Well that's what I'm doing.”

“No, you're not.”

“Clearly there's something you're not telling me. So how about you tell me what it is, rather than yelling at me that I've done _whatever it is_ wrong?”

The Spine held his gaze for a very long time, a trait that Peter found impressive. The Spine was one of the few who'd worked out exactly how to look Peter in the eye through a wooden mask. Eventually his shoulders slumped a little, and he looked back at QWERTY.

“We should go for a walk.”

***

*5-QU-34-K5

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh! Phyllisia! I forgot she comes in here!  
> You'll meet her again. I rather like her.


	22. Grow numb to that feeling of pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fresh from an upgrade, Squeaks can go anywhere she wants, so she spends a little time with Rabbit down by the old duck pond, where she learns a little more of what the robots did in the years before she turned up.  
> Meanwhile, Peter is working with blue matter, again, down in the basement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the hardest parts about this is coming up with the chapter title. Sooo I'm wussing out and going with relevant SPG lyrics.
> 
> Just so you know... the story is finished. Now to slowly release it to the world - I hope you all like it. Thanks evermore for your kudos and kind words, it's helped me to write a very long story and drag you all along!
> 
> TLL  
> 24/03/18

The world clicked and hummed, and Squeaks was awake. She still lay on a long metal bench, and Peter was stood by, having pulled back the curtain that hid her. As ever, he hadn't stopped since he'd started work on her, and he looked weary.

“Did it work? No memory gaps or anything?”

“Not one.” She sat up, letting her boot up codes double-check for her. They were unsure of a reconnection in her elbow, so she flexed her fingers; just fine. “I wasn't expecting to come back with too _many_ memories, for that matter.”

“Me neither.”

“So what's going on? It's like Rachel’s memories are filling themselves in backwards.”

“That might well be so. It's not coded in anywhere intentionally, so I can't seem to shut it off.”

“But why's it happening?”

“I don't really know. At an educated guess, I'd say it was something to do with those.”

He pointed to the goggles at the foot of the bench. She'd allowed them to be removed from her only because, as he had so delightfully put it, ‘your neck won't be in one piece during the process anyway’.

“We've always assumed those were connected to the both of you.”

Squeaks nodded, “They're connected to me. I worried that any connection to Rachel might fade… You think that's not true?”

Peter shrugged, “it's all I've got at the moment. I'd like to find out… Squeaks, you're still a fascinating scientific anomaly-”

“-cheers-”

“-But I'm not sure how much of this I can figure out. I might break something.”

“You'd have to go fiddling with my blue matter sources.”

“Right. I'd need to disconnect you - which trust me, I'm not doing again - or try working on the goggles. I don't know what that would do to you.”

Squeaks leaned forward to pick up the goggles. Still warm to the touch. Still reassuring.

“They kind of hum to me,” she tried to explain. “Maybe they’re loading my memories into my head.”

She glanced up at Peter, who had gone a little quiet, as she secured the goggles about her neck.

“Mm. Well, if the storage transfer has worked properly you should be able to go anywhere without issue now. Let me call someone to get you down from the bench. Spine should be nearby.”

“No!” Squeaks put out her hand to stop him, and spoke far too suddenly. “I can probably manage.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea. If you slip, I can’t catch you.”

“I won’t slip.”

“Do you want me to call someone else? Rabbit, maybe?”

Squeaks hesitated, but nodded. She didn't want to see The Spine just yet. But she couldn’t handle the thought of looking him in the face; she’d have had to either ask him or not ask him what he said, and she wasn’t sure she could do either.

Peter put out a call to Rabbit, and they waited. Peter spoke again after a moment’s thought.

“If I can help with anything, though, tell me. I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.”

Squeaks only nodded.

***

Squeaks attached herself to Rabbit and Zero in an attempt to avoid The Spine. They didn't seem to mind, but she was sure Rabbit must have noticed something, certainly when she made herself scarce twice on the same day to change oil when she heard Spine’s footsteps down the corridor. She felt foolish. Stupid. But whatever he had said, she didn't want to know it yet. It felt easier to shy away.

Easier for a couple of days, at least. Until he cottoned on that he hadn't seen her at all since her upgrade. Until he went looking for her when she was singing with Zero and Rabbit in the rehearsal room, and in panic she just ran and hid behind one of the heavy black curtains before he passed the door.

In the heavy darkness, she listened to the conversation as he walked into the room.

“Either of you seen Squeaks?”

“Nope.”

“Me uh… Me neither.”

The pause that followed was tense. Squeaks hadn't said anything before diving behind the nearest curtain, and she glanced down at a wavering light to find that the curtain was rippling. She could feel The Spine’s eyes just staring at her through the curtain. He must know that she was there, and she loudly willed him to go away.

“I feel…” Zero offered slowly into the silence, “like some ice-cream.”

“Z-Zero, that clogs you up real bad. And then we both have to take you for repairs-” Rabbit said, a little confused.

“I said,” Zero cut in, and it sounded like his words were forced through a frozen expression, “ _I want ice-cream._ ”

“Ice-cream,” Rabbit caught on, “yes. In the kitchen. Which is away from here. Come along, Spine.”

Squeaks heard the scuffle of two robots urging a third, physically, from the room as he quietly objected, but the noise died anyway down the corridor. She emerged from her hiding place, burning up with shame. Zero and Rabbit had _seen_ her hide, and there was no way that Spine hadn't seen where she was. But the others had lied for her, and he hadn't questioned it. It was grossly unfair on all of them, and she felt rotten. But still, she left the room and walked out the opposite way from the others, in search of someone else not in The Spine’s company. She looked for Peter.

***

Squeaks wouldn't be able to find Peter, who was once more in the basement room.

He has brought down several vials of matter, trying to see if he could make any headway with Squeaks’ memory problem. He could have worked in any of his labs, but - he glanced over at the Nothing in the corner - if something happened here, he intended to be the first to know.

He'd stormed down with vials the previous day, but after two days not an awful lot had happened. He made little headway in his blue matter work, and the most that the Nothing seemed to do was crackle if he coughed a little too loudly.

Without active interaction, he determined, the hole seemed inert. Which made it easier to forget about when he was otherwise engrossed.

He was working on an experiment with something smaller than humans; he'd paired a mouse with a small quantity of blue matter, and changed the power source on a wind-up mouse to the same*. The wind-up glowed blue and for some reason hovered gently a hair's breadth above the desk, but it still otherwise behaved the same. The other little white mouse just looked vaguely confused.

On the desk, he placed the wind-up, the vial of blue matter linked to the white mouse, and a control vial of new blue matter - and stared at them a while. They all looked much the same.

The little white mouse didn't seem to react in any way when he moved its blue matter vial around. He waved the vial about a bit, and walked around the room to see if stretching the distance between the mouse and its blue matter caused it any distress, but it just watched him with a reasonably continuous level of trepidation.

The wind-up was a different story. The moment he removed the core, it stopped quietly ticking and dropped to the desk. He opened the core and poured it into a vial of its own. That seemed the only physical difference between paired and unpaired matter. Blue matter acted like a heavy plasma, rippling thickly in the bottom of the vial, and trying to climb up the sides. The moment it paired, the matter… stopped climbing. It would ripple and flicker, but now it pulled away from the sides, insistent on being whole. If one tried to pour it out, the whole thing would slide lumpily out of the tube. He had to be very careful to split paired matter without causing a dramatic exothermic reaction. It didn't like being tampered with.

The wind-up now silent, Peter looked at the three vials. One with matter gently slipping the glass and falling back down inside, two with matter balled in on itself. Otherwise, much the same.

He picked up the vial of unpaired matter, and held it up against the light. Mostly opaque, but emitting a soft, blue glow all its own.

He stepped back for better light, looking into the vial for any change - and heard a sizzling pop from the back of his lab coat.

Peter whipped around and lurched back, clutching the desk in his panic. The Nothing had gone so quiet he had forgotten it was there, and nearly walked straight into the damn thing. He tore his lab coat off and held it up in front of his eyes; there was a smoking hole just below where the shoulder used to be. He swallowed down the solid lump congealing in his throat. That was closer than he cared to admit.

He muttered a curse when he clocked that he must have dropped the vial, as well. Spilled blue matter was a nightmare to clean up. He lowered his lab coat to find where the vial had landed.

Except it hadn't.

There was no smashed vial on the ground at all.

There _was_ a glowing pool of molten glass beneath the Nothing. What there _wasn't_ was a sea of frothing blue matter creeping out from all sides.

He must have accidentally thrown the vial at the thing when he jumped.

But then where was the blue matter?

Blue matter had an absurdly high boiling point. If anything, it was volatile enough that it should have exploded on impact. Peter found himself checking he still had fingers, in case he hadn't noticed the explosion.

Fingers present.

Glass, present.

No blue matter.

Instinctively, Peter grabbed the vial from the wind-up and tipped the blue matter into his hand, where it landed solidly before beginning to ooze between his fingers. He threw it.

Noiselessly, it vanished into the void.

The blue matter had flung from his fingertips and, as he flinched for the impending crackle, there was silence. The matter appeared to meet no resistance on hitting the Nothing and merely slipped through it and out of sight.

The revelation was exciting. Where had it gone to? Had it just evaporated?

Normal matter was destroyed on impact, and could not pass through. But this wasn't entirely matter, after all. It had its own rules.

Peter flourished out of the room and returned laden with heavy, steel-lined boxes, gently laying them out on the desk. They were all securely fastened, though the first had an opening at the bottom, to which he screwed a metal tap. He poured a few drops of blue matter from the tap into a spare jar, and removed the tap when he was done, sticking his fingers straight into the jar. Little by little, he flicked droplets of matter at the Nothing and watched in awe as they all simply vanished through it. Watching closely, the gray surface would ripple very slightly on impact. It was like watching pebbles landing in a murky pond; the blue matter simply slid behind the surface, which undulated as it passed by.

When the jar was empty, he opened the latches on the lid of another box and used the jar to scoop up about a teaspoonful of the contents. This matter didn’t writhe and try to escape like blue matter did. The green matter in the box was still and flat, somehow resentfully so, and oozed slowly to refill the hole he left to fill the jar. This was a boxful his father had bought from the Beciles in a reluctant deal, and hadn't used a lot of. They kept it for experiments, but didn’t like to use it beyond that.

It was too viscous to flick from his fingers, and so instead Peter stepped a little further away and let some green matter gloop onto one hand, rolling it into a pea-sized ball and throwing it, expecting to watch it pass through the gray surface like the blue matter had done.

Instead, it hit the surface and appeared to splatter on it, clinging on and gradually dispersing as it formed a thin green film. The film slowly began to condense, dripping off the bottom of the thing into a box Peter had got around to placing underneath.

He tried different colors of matter, all with much the same effect. Only the blue matter appeared to pass through. Everything else bounced, or evaporated. He even lobbed a little red matter – only as big as his thumbnail, very carefully extracted and thrown from as far away as he could get – which exploded on impact.

It wasn’t a portal. Apparently, it mostly just burned things. It seemed to behave like a filter. A blue matter filter.

Until he could work out how to close it, no-one else was coming anywhere near it.

***

_1972, Vietnam, location overwise unknown_

_Rabbit hummed tunelessly. From the next room, he heard an explosion, and a metal shard pierced through the steel wall to his right._

_So he hummed louder, his voice a little higher and tighter. He averted his gaze from the wall, and wondered which robot been in that room before it blew up._

_Looking the other way was difficult, seeing as he only had one eye in at the moment, and he couldn't really turn his head at all._

_He got bored, so looked for something to keep him busy … Counting. Count the… Cracks in the ceiling._

_Five. Five cracks in the ceiling._

_Count the… Count my fingers._

_Uhm. At the moment, none to speak of. None of his limbs were still attached._

_Count the… Bricks in the far wall._

_One, two, many, lots… He lost interest quickly. The door handle rattled, and the door opened. He fixed his wide eye on the wall and tried again, desperately ignoring the man approaching him._

_OneTwoThreeFour-_

_The man got closer, and picked a sharp tool from the side. He kicked something out of his way, which happened to be one of Rabbit's bellows, laid out on the floor. The man wouldn't speak to him. Never did._

_- **FiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteen…**_

***

Squeaks couldn't find anyone, and had given up to go back to the rehearsal room and play the keyboard in the corner. That made sense; Rachel played the piano, and so therefore did she. She was dredging up how to play some obnoxious Christmas jazz when someone coughed metallicly behind her.

“Only me,” came Rabbit's voice, “I ditched the others.”

“Has Zero had some ice-cream?” Squeaks tried to answer casually.

“Chocolate. Spine’s trying to carry him to repairs.”

Rabbit sashayed into view and tried to sit on the keyboard, which buckled under her weight.

“D’you wanna see the duck pond? Just you and me.”

“A duck pond?”

“Yeah. It's beauty-ful.”

Squeaks shrugged. It was something to do. Rabbit led her out through the theatre door and along the path down to the left of the Manor, which dropped away over a hill to a spot Squeaks hadn't seen before. Two benches faced away from them overlooking a little overgrown pond. The surface flickered happily in the sunshine, and momentarily a solitary duck poked its head out from behind the reeds.

“Give ‘em a moment,” Rabbit murmured, motioning for Squeaks to join her on one of the heavily reinforced benches, “they're a tad shy.”

Squeaks sat and waited, and looked out. On another hill overlooking the pond, and under the shadow of a large, low-hanging tree, were a series of small round rocks. Not significant, but evenly and purposefully placed. Some looked oddly polished.

“Those rocks…” Squeaks began to ask.

“Gravestones,” Rabbit answered, fishing a bag of cut grapes from a pocket and handing it to Squeaks. “We can't always mark who's underneath, for one reason or another. But we remember. And they get a great view of the ducks from there.”

The duck drifted tentatively toward Rabbit, turning its head to keep a cautious eye on Squeaks. Rabbit fished into the bag and threw it a piece of grape, which it gladly nipped from the water.

“See the big brown one at the back, there? That's Pappy.” She pointed out the largest stone, which stuck out of the ground to knee-height. It was a dark coppery brown, and the top was rounded and smooth. The tree flustered in a breeze, and the sun glared off the rock. It was polished to a mirror shine.

The duck still had its head on one side, bobbing up and down and watching Squeaks steadily. She threw another grape, and the scrap was gone before it could hit the water. The duck gave an approving quack, and a train of ducklings arriving peeping loudly from the reeds where they'd been hiding.

“Aaw look!” Squeaks gasped, throwing out another handful of food, “oh, they're so small!”

The ducklings seemed more yellow fluff than duck, with little orange bills, and eagerly bumped into one another in their attempts to reach the grapes.

“Why are we throwing grapes, anyway? I thought it was bread, for ducks.”

“Traditionally. But bread’s not great for them.” Rabbit grabbed a grape and bounced it off the head of the nearest duckling, who didn't seem to mind and just squeaked hopefully. “It would be like throwing pizza for humans. They'd like it, but it wouldn't do a lot of good.”

Squeaks reached for another piece, and pulled her arm up to find it covered in stick juice. “And you cut them up because…”

“They'd choke otherwise. Not strong chewers - that goes for ducks and babies.” Rabbit chuckled to herself, “Petey loved grapes when he was tiny. Annie got me to smash ‘em up for him. He loved watching it. He had the cutest little baby giggle.”

They sat just feeding the ducks for a while, who slowly warmed to Squeaks’ presence. They were evidently used to Rabbit being around.

“So you're avoiding my brother like the plague,” Rabbit said eventually. It was a statement, not a question.

“Perhaps.”

“How'd he blow it? You were getting pretty sweet on him.”

“Oh, for goodness sake. Does _everyone_ know?”

Rabbit shrugged, “dunno. But the big goo-goo eyes are a bit of a giveaway.”

She turned to Squeaks with wide, shining oddball eyes, and fluttered her eyelids. Squeaks hadn't noticed how long her eyelashes were before.

“I don't look like that,” Squeaks snickered despite herself.

“Suuure. C’mon. What did he do? D’you want me ta beat him up?”

“No, Rabbit…” she sighed, “Apparently he said something. About me. Which I'd rather not have known. And I'm afraid to ask him why.”

“So don't.”

“But I don't think I can talk to him until I do.”

“So ask him.”

Squeaks smiled, and threw another grape.

“It's not something I can do right now.”

“You humans are so complicated.”

“I'm not human, Rabbit. Remember?”

“Sure y’are. A soft, mushy human in a crunchy shell.”

Squeaks looked at her in bemusement, and Rabbit smiled back. “You don't get it? I was built. Everything I learned from there I learned as a robut. You… You've got all the mushy stuff up here.” She tapped her forehead, “You learned all this from the people-side. And you're as human to me as any of the others around here.

Squeaks huffed. Whatever Rabbit saw was mostly for show. Squeaks’ feelings were synthetic. Her mannerisms were programmed imitations. She even faked _breathing._

“So you _don't_ want me to beat him up?” Rabbit pressed.

“Not especially. Just give me a little time to get over myself.”

“Suit yourself. ‘course if you need some time to think properly you can always take a day trip to Kazooland.”

“Spine said there wasn’t a portal open.”

Rabbit shrugged, “ask Peter. He could open one up.”

Rabbit nabbed a grape and popped it in her mouth.

“Are you supposed to do that?” Squeaks asked when juice began dripping out between the wires in Rabbit’s jaw.

“Eh. Not especially. I'll get a clean out later.”

She threw more grapes as Squeaks looked out over the graveyard. She had wanted to ask before, but the time was never right. If she couldn’t ask when sat in front a hill of graves, well…

“Rabbit… Do you ever think what happens when you die?”

Rabbit rolled another grape around thoughtfully and projected it over the pond. “Nope.”

“Not even a little?”

“What's to think? M’gears stop. The end.”

“And that doesn't scare you? What if it's not the end?”

“See there you go again. If we end, we end. Not scary. If we don't, we don't. _Still_ not scary. Besides, ‘course it's the end. Where else’d we go? Robot heaven?” Rabbit laughed.

“We worry about the humans, of course. ‘cause we miss ‘em when they go, and sometimes it hurts to die. I get that's scary. But it probably won't even hurt me much.”

“At all, in fact.”

“Eh? Oh. Right.”

Squeaks looked back at Rabbit, who seemed to be trying to skip grapes on water, and a whiny little voice began to talk.

_Inconsistency: registered._

_Checking file for inconsistency._

Her head began searching through memories, and brought one from several months before. Sitting on a hard stone floor, Squeaks held out a badly broken wrist to Hatchworth.

“We don't have pain receptors,” he'd said, inspecting her hand in sympathy.

The Spine had looked anywhere but at Squeaks. And Rabbit… Squeaks had thought she'd just not been paying attention but looking back, she too refused to look at Squeaks, and her face was frozen. She'd sucked in her lip nervously.

_Inconsistency: pain reception. Inconclusive. Inquire._

“I don't feel pain,” said Squeaks slowly, “but you do, don't you?”

“It's not something I bring up all that often.”

“ _How?_ How come you can and I can't?”

Rabbit turned her head to Squeaks with half a grape between ceramic teeth, and winked. She winked her green eye.

“It’s fascinatin’ what a little color change’ll do.”

“The green eye?”

“One little green eye.”

“Spell this out for me,” Squeaks said, putting a hand on Rabbit’s arm. Someone, somewhere, was making a pair of green eyes just for Squeaks, but it had never occurred to her that such a thing would mean much more than better vision. “How do you feel pain?”

“I don’t feel it a whole lot,” Rabbit rolled her eyes, “it’s the green matter in my orbital. Never really understood it. Spine gets it more than me.”

“Spine feels pain?”

“Duh. Them saucy green eyes? Why d’you think he keeps them?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“Really?” Rabbit’s eyes glittered. “You can’t think why he might enjoy that?**”

Squeaks remembered pain, but the memories were dull. Muted. “I remember feeling it. From before. But humans forget pain. It’s never as strong when you try to look back at it.”

“Humans have to. If we felt anything as strongly, we’d spend half our time wiping our hard-drives out.”

“So why would Spine want that?”

“If you can’t be somethin’, the next best thing is to sympathise.”

What did Spine want to be?

_Human._

As Squeaks eyes grew wide, Rabbit took the grape bag and shook it upside-down, pouting when nothing more fell out. One of the onlooking ducklings made a peeping noise, and the whole family, seeing that there was no more food, made themselves scarce.

“The Spine prefers to feel pain to be more human?”

“It’s the next best thing after havin’ a beating heart.”

“Then why do _you_ keep your eye?”

“Like I said, I’ve only got one. It doesn’t hurt all that. But a girl likes to look her best,” and she grinned widely. Having one of each colour did rather set out the different hues in her corroded copper.

“Does it… hurt all the time?” Squeaks had begun to feel dubious about changing her eyes.

“Nah. Pain’s not constant. Only when someone hits me too hard. Oh, and don’t smack The Spine, neither. He feels that.”

Rabbit stood and began to wipe grape juice off the front of her dress, and so Squeaks began nudging forward off her seat to stand up.

“Just out of curiousity, then,” Squeaks continued, “how did you get them in the first place? Spine said Peter doesn’t work with green matter.”

Rabbit paused mid-swipe, and her hand ticked once or twice until she rotated it to stop ticking. For the first time, Squeaks noticed her wince very slightly at the movement.

“We used to fight wars, back in the day. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No…”

“Years back. We’re pretty expensive to run and we were hired out to the US to pay the bills. We didn’t have to hurt anyone, but we went where you wouldn’t send humans because they wouldn’t come back.”

“So they sent you?”

Rabbit nodded, and pointed at her eye, “we got these in Vietnam. We got captured out in the field and experimented on. I think they really wanted to find out what made us tick, see if they could control us for their own means. Didn’t have a lot of luck. They had green matter, I don’t even know from where and... well, they replaced one of my eyes.”

“Why? Why only one?”

“I don't know why they were replacin’ ‘em, but they only had time to put one in before we got out. But we kept ‘em, once we found out how they worked.”

“Spine got his eyes in Vietnam too?”

Rabbit’s eyes flickered to Squeaks and away again.

“He had a bad time out there.” Any glimmer of joy had gone from Rabbit’s face. “We were out there for years, being ‘studied’ in different rooms. One day Spine just walked in. His eyes had gone green. No-one followed him. Turned out US forces had tried to take the compound and rescue us, but they’d failed. Everyone died. One guy got as far as Th’Spine and let him out before collapsing.”

Rabbit shuddered.

“I ain’t afraid of dying, but Spine had to carry me out in pieces. And I was still in better shape than a lot of the folks I saw on the way out. There was just nobody left alive. Friend or foe. It was Spine’s idea to install the Vow of Peace when we got back. Didn’t smile for years. I think he musta seen the whole thing.”

Squeaks wordlessly rubbed her face on her sleeve, and realised her hands were trembling. She tried to summon up words, but nothing really came. Rabbit coughed loudly, and her bellows let out an old rattle.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t think that was what you needed to know.”

“I had no idea. Sorry to make you talk about it. I didn’t realise you’d been tortured before.”

“Kinda. But then that’d happened before.”

“Really?”

Rabbit nodded, “didn’t hurt the first time. Got kidnapped. Tampered with. Some stuff kinda exploded and killed a lot of people. Left big old holes in space everywhere. We keep finding them every now and then.” She pointed up to the graveyard, “That’s what got Walter II.”

“Holes in space?”

“Nah, me exploding. I’d feel guilty, but I don’t think it hurt him. I think it was quick.” She took off her hat and fumbled with it. “Do you mind if I go up there a minute? I like to pay my respects to Pappy.”

Squeaks let herself down onto the bench again, and waved Rabbit away, her head slightly numb from everything Rabbit had said. Pain, torture, death. They’d seen it all and come out the other side to do it all over again.

She set and waited as Rabbit walked down the hill and up the other side towards the large stones under the tree. As she reached Peter Walter I’s stone, Squeaks could see her mouth moving, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. A few minutes passed, with Rabbit stood talking to the grave marker, her hands clasped behind her back. She turned away from Squeaks, but unmistakably passed her gloved hand over her eyes. Her hand came down on the rock, and stroked it sadly and lovingly, gently polishing it with oily tears.

After some 70 years since Peter Walter I must have died, Squeaks could see how the visits of his mourning creations had left their mark.

***

_1973_

_Creak. Ee-eeek._

_Rabbit didn't like pain. It hurt._

_Eeek._

_His jaw had been yanked off, but the left side had snapped, near the hinge, and he could still move the inch or so that hung off. It hurt, but at least it made a noise when he moved it._

_Screeee._

_He'd been busy counting the bits of him that didn't hurt because they’d been removed, which turned out to be most of them. He'd counted them twice today already, because there wasn't much else to do. His new green eye was stuck out of focus, and his blue eye was cracked, so he couldn't really see to count other things. But his ears worked fine, so when he heard gunfire, he stopped counting._

_Yelling and gunfire. Far away. And then screaming. Getting closer. Lots of screaming, and meaty sounds. Then quiet. Rabbit thought he heard sobbing. It stopped._

_Then heavy, slow footsteps. The door opened, and there was someone tall. He couldn't make out much, just a black silhouette against the light. Whoever it was, green light shone dimly from its face._

_“Rab… bit?” said the silhouette brokenly._

_Th’Spine?_

_Rabbit tried to answer. With no lower jaw and a broken vocal assembly, nothing came out._

_But he could make noise._

_Squee-eeeak?_

***

Squeaks wandered off alone when Rabbit started talking to the tree, and walked around the grounds hoping she wouldn't bump into anyone else, until the sun had set and she could no longer see where she was walking. Her head was swimming a little with the slow realisation that she didn’t know these robots at all. They’d lived through torture, and fighting, and watching all their favourite humans die.

It was still something she wasn’t ready to learn how to do.

As she walked back into the Manor, a clunking noise off to her left alerted her to the arrival of the basement lift, and Peter almost fell out the door holding a large sealed box.

“I thought you sealed the basement off,” she asked as he began to walk away, and he spun to see her rolling up behind him.

“I did,” he said, fumbling his box which hadn’t turned around as fast as he had, “to the robots. But I can still go down there. I’m afraid you can’t go down there for a little while.”

“How come?” Squeaks dropped into pace with him as he headed up towards the upper floors with his box, “Are you building someone else?”

“No, not for now. Something’s opened up in the side-room and it’s too dangerous not to be sealed off.”

“You mean to tell me something’s here that’s dangerous enough to scare _you_? More than the shark tank or the man-eating plants?”

“ _You_ can survive those. When it’s lethal to robots I get worried.”

“Hmm. Peter, can I ask a favour?”

Peter stopped, his foot on the bottom step. “You can ask.”

“Are you still working on making legs for me?”

“I am. Still a couple of months’ work, though.”

“Rabbit said that you can open up portals to Kazooland. Can you?”

“Sure I can. You want one?”

Squeaks thought for a moment. “Here in the Manor I can’t really get a break from all this. But Kazooland sounds different. And far away.”

Peter shrugged, “alright. Well I’m a little busy right now but,” he shifted the weight of the box in his hands, “I’ll set something up for you. Might take a few days to get the location right.”

“Thank you.”

She went to follow him up the stairs, but a little trilling began in her head. She waved him off, and silently answered what was an incoming phone call.

_Hello?_

“Hi, is that Squeaks?”

_It is… Phyllisia? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you yet._

“Turns out your orbitals are very close to a standard specification. Looks like I’ve got eyes for you. When do you fancy coming to get them?”

_Oh! Well, uh… I might’ve changed my mind._

“Rats, really? How come, we could really use your help.”

_I just had a conversation with Rabbit. She said they make you feel pain… I’m not sure if I want that._

“Does she mind it? I’m guessing it’s not something Spine ever brings up.”

_She doesn’t seem to. And neither does Spine but- look, I’m sorry, you said I shouldn’t know the symptoms before I do the trial._

“No, no, that’s OK. We have to make allowances for you finding out by mistake.” The voice on the end of the call paused thoughtfully, “look, the pain, it’s a little more human, but it’s not insurmountable. If you don’t like them, we can always remove them. We won’t make you do the whole trial. What do you say?”

A little more human. There it was again. Squeaks brought her hands up to her goggles. She didn’t know anymore whether she was just chasing The Spine to the same feelings, or trying to reclaim something she’d once had. Access to pain couldn’t be any more useful than the sensors she already had. But now she _wanted_ it.

_Alright. Are you far from San Diego?_

“We’re right here in town. I’ll send you the address, but really you can’t miss it. Big white tower. When should I expect you?”

_I don’t know… tomorrow, perhaps?_

“Until tomorrow, then. Nice talking with you, Squeaks.”

The line went dead, and Squeaks found herself facing the entrance doorway. She could leave the Manor the next day. She wondered whether she needed to take anything with her, or who she should tell before she left, or how long she’d be gone for.

_Hi_

The voice was quiet, nervous, but unmistakeable. It promised green eyes, a disarming smile, and a gentle kindness that Squeaks had begun to believe was more than just cordial.

_Is it your turn to avoid me?_

Squeaks slammed the channel closed so quickly she almost jumped. In her panic she shut down every signal until her WiFi was completely cut off, and stood in the entrance hall, alone. She looked about, wide-eyed, but no-one else was there. No-one was watching.

She’d never shut off her WiFi before. It was… quiet. Unnervingly still. It wasn’t the deadness of her Nothing nightmares, and all her internal signals still muttered to her, but there wasn’t the constant buzz of her mind stretching back and forth. There was just her, and the doorway to the world, right in front of her.

She realised that she’d shut herself out from the network, and there was no way The Spine wouldn’t have noticed her blocking him out like that. She looked over her shoulder again, worried that even now he was coming to confront her. She didn’t want to know. Not now, not ever, did she want to know why The Spine would so casually demand her execution.

She needed an excuse to fall off from the Walter connection.

And out there waited improvement. Something to help her feel just a little more like life once had been.

Green eyes stalked behind her, but green eyed waited before.

She left Walter Manor, into the dark of the night, before anyone could stop her going, and headed for the address Phyllisia had sent her, just before she had closed herself off from the world.

It wasn’t even all that far. A corporate address, somewhere called ‘Becile Industries’.

*****

*he bought 40 clockwork mice on wholesale.

**I'm sure I have a certain brand of reader. And to that reader, I offer a suggestive eye waggle. 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh! OH what's this? Becile Industries you say? Little robot going all the way to enemy territory on her own? I'm sure that will go well. Guess you'll have to read the next chapter. 
> 
> I feel like coloured matter behaves a little like a non-Newtonian fluid (please see any video on oobleck). A little like a liquid, but holds its form like a solid under pressure. But I gave the different matter types slightly different behaviour, otherwise: unpaired blue matter behaves a little like a superfluid helium, being very hard to contain because it has a tendancy to climb up (or seep) out of any open container you put it in.
> 
> ...this is what you get when you let someone write fan-fic who used to know a lot about science.
> 
> Now, I have taken a little artistic licence here. In original timeline notes, it is implied that Rabbit’s core was stolen back in 1950 by the Beciles, and exploded, killing or maiming several Beciles and Walters. I don’t believe the robots can function at ALL without their blue cores; I would guess that this is related to the Red Core comic series (i.e. if your blue core’s blown up, best make a red one in a hurry). However, I’ve previously implied that being unplugged from the blue core leaves a robot permanently altered, and I don’t believe Rabbit’s gone through this. So a little giggery-pokery here, I’ve assumed the events of the Vice Quadrant timeline, and that fiddling with Rabbit’s core resulted in an explosion, but didn’t actually damage the core itself. Right. Jolly good.
> 
> Also, I’ve taken immense artistic licence with my interpretation of green matter. THEORY, Y’ALL.


	23. No matter where it is she goes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks has been promised the prospect of a pair of green matter eyes and, somewhat unaware of the implicit dangers, travels alone to Becile Industries to have them installed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a little longer than usual - I could've cut it in the middle, but a) that would've been a very short chapter, b) I don't intend to delay roll-out of this any more than I have to. I should probably say this chapter might be a trigger for dismemberment, death and blood. Not a lot of it, not too graphic, but it's there.
> 
> But yay, I get to write about Becile Industries!  
> Happy Easter everyone, and see you next Saturday. Thank you for sticking with me, I hope you still like the story.
> 
> TLL  
> 31/03/2018

By the time Squeaks was in the thick of the city, the sky was starting to light up again.

She’d walked the whole way overnight, and it had eventually dawned on her that she hadn’t become tired. Her blue core was a seemingly limitless source of energy, and she only used up water as coolant. The night had been cold, so she had avoided steaming in case it froze to her body. She felt like she could walk forever, if needed.

Except that she had become bored. The trip took hours, and she was grateful that the moon had come up as she descended the mountain. There were paths down towards the city, but they were covered in dust and loose rocks, and in the dark Squeaks would have rolled most of the way down.

The deeper she intruded into San Diego, the more that people stared, or tried not to. She regretted that she hadn't taken a long coat when she'd left in such a hurry, instead having walked out in a short black dress and no wig; it was tremendously obvious that this small, two-wheeled silver robot was wondering through the roads as the dead of night approached. On the outskirts of the town people stared, but said nothing. And as she approached downtown people stopped staring. It seemed that she wasn't as unusual here as she thought.

By now the sky was slowly pushing back the stars, and it was a little way before dawn.

Every building here was some shade of white, with clean cut corners and gleaming windows. She passed a court building in huge cream stone that looked like it got freshly washed and buffed every other day. And everywhere there were tunnels jutting from building to building to protect walkers from the roads and the heat of the day. But just beyond, a building stood just a little out of place. A tall, white cuboid that jabbed into the sky, and where its neighbours had spread out over the surrounding land, this one was simply narrow. It looked like it had arrived later than the rest, taken the small square of ground no-one wanted, and simply built straight _up_. All those buildings surrounding the tower were slightly cream, a little redder than white. The tower felt like it gleamed pure white, insofar that it went a little the other way and was only the slightest hint of icy green. There were no windows above ground level.

On the very top of the tower stood a large shape, which was lit from within, and was glowing into the dark sky. A white letter ‘B’, with a green-glowing ‘i’ at its centre. The logo, Squeaks could only presume, of Becile Industries.

At ground level, there was only one wide, mirrored set of doors. Multiple security cameras swivelled to pursue Squeaks as she walked up to the door, and they watched her push against it. The door was locked. A notice to the side was a little more illuminating.

BECILE INDUSTRIES

AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

GUESTS REPORT TO RECEPTION

DOORS OPEN 0700 - 1900

That was still two hours away. Squeaks busied herself following signs to the Seaport village, thinking she would find herself in a quaint seaside village, before finding out it was actually a commercial complex. Still, it was quiet and by the sea. She found the waves relaxing, and watched the waves happily for a good while before walking back, by which time the streets had begun to wake up, and she joined a steadily thickening flow of people heading into the city for early shifts. As Squeaks reached the tower, several people pushed through the flow and walked through the door with her, all in dark, pressed suits. The woman nearest Squeaks turned her head sharply in surprise as she followed her through, and swiftly wiped her hand over a scanner to vanish through a turnstile.

Inside there was a large, gleaming white foyer. A steady stream of people passed Squeaks to scan their hands through glass turnstiles either side of a curved white reception desk, headed towards lifts on a black stone wall at the far end. The people who didn't ignore her swung to give her a wide berth when they spotted her stood in the way, and more than one gave her a wary eye. She rolled up to the desk, where a well-dressed man and woman were sat, the first of whom glanced up and immediately removed himself from the situation by picking up a ringing phone.

The woman's lips stretched thin.

“Welcome to Becile Industries. Can I help you at all?” She spoke with the air of one who didn't feel she was likely to be any help at all.

“I'm here to see someone. Phyllisia-” Squeaks faltered “- I don't actually know her surname.”

The woman half-suppressed a sigh, but typed the name into her computer, at which point her eyebrows briefly flicked upward.

“Oh! Is she expecting you?”

“Technically. Though perhaps not this early.”

“I shouldn't think so. She's not signed in yet. You're welcome to come back in a while.”

“I can wait here.”

The woman was less than enthusiastic to point out the set of white sofas up against the back wall facing the desk, but Squeaks didn't need them anyway, and stood politely next to a sofa while she waited. The steady traffic into the building slowly grew heavier, and Squeaks marked the passing time by counting bodies.

She'd got to 582 when a young woman pushed her way back through the stream of people towards her, and tentatively caught her eye.

“Squeaks?”

She was significantly taller than Squeaks, with strong shoulders. Her face was naturally stern, but she smiled nervously into it. Long, straight black hair reached her elbows. She wore large round-rimmed glasses that made her face look narrower, and a long white labcoat with green buttons that looked like it had been thrown on in a hurry. There was the faintest green tint to her hair and skin, but both were dark enough that it was difficult to tell. Her eyes were dark brown enough to be almost black.

“That's me.”

The woman's shoulders relaxed, “I didn't realise you'd be here so early. I hope you didn't hang around too long.”

“Not terribly. I'm sorry, I ended up travelling overnight.”

“Oh! Do you need anything? Water top up?”

Squeaks shrugged, “it was pretty cold, I didn't use much up. I'm guessing you're Phyllisia?”

“Oh yes…” Phyllisia dug a hand into a pocket to bring out a staff ID card on a long, green-and-black lanyard, which she hung around her neck.

“I'm supposed to wear this all the time. Thanks for reminding me. And yes, pleased to meet you. Would you like to join me upstairs?”

Squeaks followed Phyllisia to the turnstiles, where they had to use an override to get Squeaks through, but she got a look at Phyllisia’s lanyard while she was pushing through the gate; ‘Phyllisia Becile’.

Phyllisia led Squeaks through the lift and several floors up, to a level where she had to swipe her hand again to gain access. The door opened to a long, white corridor, off which were several doors on either side; heavy, thick, metal doors which looked able to withstand explosion. As they passed, Squeaks realised she was staring at the doors with fascination, and couldn't remember the last time she'd seen one.

The doors all had plaques that gave away no purpose to the room besides ‘52.6’ but even through the heavy metal Squeaks could hear the noise of deadened gunfire.

“What does Becile Industries do, exactly? I hear guns.”

“Scientific research, wherever we're wanted. So on this floor, we're developing military firepower.”

“You design _guns_?”

“That's not a problem, is it?”

Squeaks hesitated a moment, during which a large explosion could just be heard as she passed a door.

“I don't know… I thought you made parts for robots.”

Squeaks vaguely registered that she didn't like guns. They allowed you to be lethal to a lot of people from very far away. But then, that was probably what the military was for.

“Sure, that's ongoing. But we don't limit ourselves to it.”

Phyllisia scanned her palm over a door on the right, and let Squeaks in. Beyond was a large room full of laboratory benches and well-organised shelving, but devoid of any other people. Lying on the bench nearest the door, and attached to it by a heavy chain, was something that looked rather like a large, white hairdryer with a long nozzle. The inside was coated with something silver.

“My latest project,” Phyllisia said proudly, closing the door behind them. “All our work’s confidential, of course, but as long as you can't steal this there's no harm you seeing it.”

“You work in haircare too?”

“I _cannot_ recommend pointing this at your head,” Phyllisia laughed. “It's a laser-pulse gun. Uses an intense concentration of photons like a cannonball, transferring energy to accelerate the target close to the speed of light. No one's going to survive that.”

“Least of all the person holding the gun. The kickback must be phenomenal.”

“I'm working on that. You picked up pretty quick.”

“I'm a robot,” said Squeaks dryly. “And before that I was a scientist. I like to think I have a decent understanding of momentum.”

“Mm. At the moment I'm thinking of some kind of discharge in the opposite direction.”

“Which would require a huge amount of wasted energy,” Squeaks added, “and still enormously dangerous to whoever’s holding the thing. Unless you split the discharge beam into multiple components around the same direction.”

Phyllisia smiled at her, visibly impressed. “Walter Robotics is very lucky to have you.”

“Oh, I don't work there. They made me by mistake, so now I just kind of faff around the Manor all day.”

Phyllisia’s eyes lit up. “Do you wanna work _here_? We'd love to have someone like you.”

Squeaks thought back to the politely accusing looks she'd been getting since entering the building. Phyllisia had almost bundled her in with a liftload of workers, who had recoiled at the prospect before Phyllisia had realised that would put them substantially over the weight limit.

“Are you sure about that? Everyone but you has been pretty displeased to see me here so far.”

Phyllisia looked at Squeaks strangely, and lowered the gun to the table.

“You are, very obviously, a Walter Robotics build,” she said slowly.

“Is that a problem?”

Phyllisia gave out a snort, but smiled all the same.

“Walter Robotics and Becile Industries are _technically_ business rivals,” she explained, “going back a fair way. We're the only two major competitors in AI, after all.”

“Oh! Should I not have answered the study advert?”

“I'll admit your application was a bit of a surprise, but that's kind of why-” Phyllisia cut herself short, and waved irritability, “Enough of my rambling. You came here to be my test subject, not for me to talk about business practice. C’mon, come and meet your new eyes.”

As she led around to the other side of the bench, Phyllisia took a hairband from her wrist and tied her hair out of her face into a haphazard bun. She took a small petty-cash box from a pedestal under the bench and opened it with a key from her pocket.

“Here,” she said, turning the box towards Squeaks, “what do you think?”

Each eye was half a smooth hemisphere of glass, half a confusion of tangled metal wires protruding from the back. Surrounding the iris, the glass was painted a creamy white on the inside, but a metallic sheen of hair-width wires scattered over the glass like veins. The iris itself glowed a vibrant green. The green matter swirled around inside the marble of glass like a vortex of thick, radiant smoke, skirting around the edges to leave a dark, pupil-like hole in the centre, so that the iris seemed to merge into the pupil.

As Squeaks picked one up and held it to the light, the green matter began spinning more vigorously, and the vortex tightened as the light almost seemed to press up against the glass to look at her, the pupil contracting.

“They're stunning,” she said simply, marvelling at the movement of colours. They weren't altogether unlike those she was used to seeing at the Manor. She ran a hand over the little thing, feeling the smoothness of the glass, and the cables trailing out from behind the lenses. The longer she looked at it, the more a smile began extended across her lips. The wires across the surface caught the light just _so_. The shades of green, through limes and emeralds and deep forest greens, rippled beautifully, intertwining but somehow never mixing to form a flat colour. It was a gem of a thing, and Squeaks found herself falling in love with it far too quickly.

“They're _gorgeous_ ,” she said, with a wide grin.

“Glad you like ‘em. I think the caps are a pretty good match too, don't you think?”

From the box, Phyllisia picked out two familiar coloured pieces, eyecaps painted blue just like hers. Plastic, Phyllisia explained, and she showed her the catch-points that allowed the caps to pop on and off of the green eyes.

“It seems a shame to cover them up,” Squeaks said, a little disappointed.

“I know. They'll look stunning on you. But it's only for three weeks while I run the trial. _Then_ just think how surprised they'll be back at the Manor!”

She showed Squeaks to a reclining chair, and tilted it back until Squeaks was facing the ceiling. Phyllisia turned away to pick up a pair of wire clippers, and so Squeaks gave out a polite cough.

“I probably should've mentioned before, but I have a bit of a ‘human’ complex. I don't make a great patient, so I usually power off, round about now,” she said eyeing up the clippers nervously. She didn't particularly like the idea of those in operation anywhere near her face.

“Ah. That could be an issue. I was rather hoping to get your opinion on the installation process… I don't suppose you could ride it out, this one time?”

Squeaks tapped the edge of the seat nervously. “I - maybe? What are you going to do?”

“Fairly simple. I remove your receptors from the sockets, disconnect them, reconnect the new ones and click them into place. Job done.”

“Could you disconnect them _first_? I don't fancy watching you pull them out.”

Phyllisia shrugged, “it's _your_ system. Just disconnect them from the circuit. Probably saves me electrocuting myself on them.”

“Oh, right.”

Squeaks laid her head back, and let her mind do the work. With her eyes open, there was a very soft click, and the room shuttered out of view.

“Alright,” she said, surrounded by blackness, “help yourself.”

“Thanks. Now I've made these as compatible as I can, but they'll still take me a few minutes to install properly.”

“You carry on. Just, perhaps, don't tell me too much of what's going on.”

The room went quiet for a few moments, apart from the clicking and snipping as Phyllisia worked. Soon a sensor informed Squeaks that a component had been removed from its port.

“Have you been in the family business long, then?” Squeaks asked conversationally.

“‘scuse me?”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but I’d guess this place is family-run. Spotted your surname. Sorry.”

“Oh, I get you.” Squeaks heard Phyllisia step away and walk around to the other side of her chair to work on the other eye, “Well, yeah, it's in the family. Buster’s right at the top - he's my cousin and the CEO - but I haven't actually worked here long.”

“No?”

“When I was old enough I went into the army.”

“Oh!” Squeaks thought for a moment. She tried to make some casual comment, but found that she didn't know the first thing about the US military. Except that the Walter robots had served in it, years before.

“Did you like it?”

“It served a purpose,” Phyllisia said thoughtfully, “my dad pressed me to it a bit. He served a few years, so did his father. That said, grandpa died out in ‘nam, apparently.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Not your fault,” Phyllisia mumbled, and something clicked. Two eyes disconnected. “Anyways, it taught me a lot. Weapons are _fascinating_ , technically speaking. Found out I'm pretty hot on code, too.”

“So why’d you leave?”

Phyllisia made a non-committal noise. “I'm not technically permitted to say. But let's just say I found out I'm _very_ good at hacking.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. So then I came back home and, well, it is a family business. I asked, and Buster had this job all set.”

“To make weaponry.”

“Yep.” There was another delicate click.

“So what's with the eyes? This isn't a military weapon thing.”

“No, this is a personal project. I had the brain-wave that, sure, Walter Robotics’ AI is top notch. We still haven't beaten it. But we've got ‘em licked in small parts. So what if we made universal parts? That's why you're here. I've got to prove -” there was a pause, and another click, “- that it would work.”

“Huh. Makes sense.”

“You got me yammering. How about you? You said you're an imitation, right? Did Peter get a little crush on a lady?”

“If he did, I didn't notice.” Squeaks briefly explained how she came into existence, Rachel seemed to be connected to her, and how her memories were now slowly leaking into Squeaks’ head.

“We reckon it's something to do with these,” Squeaks touched the warmly humming goggles around her neck, “that keep the connection going, somehow.”

“How weird. Does Rachel have anything coming back the other way?”

“I don't know.”

“You haven't asked her?”

“Peter won't let me,” Squeaks said, sulkily. “Apparently I - she - whatever, insisted that we leave her alone.”

“Won't let you,” Phyllisia snorted, “this guy tells you who you can and can't talk to?”

“He - well, when you put it like that…”

“I mean if someone turned _me_ into a robot, I'd want to know more.”

“I do. I really do. Maybe I should just call her up anyway.”

“You do that.” There was the rumble and clatter of something rolling off the bench nearby, and Phyllisia swore to herself while she ducked down to fetch whatever it was from the floor.

They talked for a while longer, and Phyllisia asked about The Spine, so Squeaks explained how he had helped her when she broke her hand, and when she'd collapsed in the corridor, and now he wasn't all that serious, really, once you got to know him.

Phyllisia was pleasantly curious about her time there, so she told her various stories about the sort of things they got up to.

“Wait, I'm confused. Why is there a shark tank?” Phyllisia cut in as Squeaks was telling her about the time Zero got hold of a robot remote.

“‘Why’ is not really something I ask about Walter Manor anymore. It's more of a ‘where’ or ‘when’ thing.”

“Alrighty. _Where's_ the shark tank?”

“Second floor,” answered Squeaks, without a moment’s pause, “next to the octopus.”

Phyllisia burst out laughing, “Yikes, OK. How about… Oh, I know, Hall of Wires?”

“First floor, end of the second corridor from the left.”

“What else have I heard of… There's a big giraffe, right?”

“Lift in the entrance hall. You just follow it down.”

“Still quick.”

“Still a robot. And you quizzed me on the easy ones.”

“Those are the ones most people have heard of. Anyway,” with a satisfying clunk, a warning bleep told Squeaks that visual hardware was available for use, “that's one. So what are the more obscure areas of the building? Where does Spine hang out?"

Squeaks shrugged, "All over, really. If I need to find him, I usually start at the Hall of Wires."

Another clunk, and full visual input was available.

“That's two. Feel any different?”

“No, but I haven't restored connection yet.”

“Good point. Then mind if I try something first?”

“Go ahead.”

Squeaks heard a rubbery clang, and felt impact on her fingers.

“That hurt?”

“Nope. What did you do?”

“Just hit your hand with the wrong end of the screwdriver. OK, try restoring connection, and tell me what you feel.”

“Sure thing.”

Squeaks braced herself for a dull ache in her fingertips, but was mostly excited to see what everything looked like through new eyes, and made the connection.

***

Pain. Immediately pain.

Pain everywhere, in every fibre.

It seared her vision, she couldn't see. She could only writhe.

Burning, her chest was burning - _not now_. _Can't see…_

There was a grunting breath, and screaching, and then she _screamed_ with the pain.

Her ears rang. So loudly. And then they stopped ringing.

_CALCULATING SIMULATION._

Oh no.

_SIMULATION COMPLETE._

Not another one.

_LOADING SIMULATION…_

Just as soon as the world swam back into view, it stuttered away again, and there was darkness.

***

_She hung in space, watching as the Earth fell away beneath her. It burned an ugly red, seams of yellow cutting through the cracked skin of magma. A dead world._

_She twisted slowly, falling upwards, until fingers closed around her wrist. The grasp was cold and clammy, and she looked up into blistering green, dead eyes._

_His skin was mottled with putrefaction and hung loosely from his face. He wore a white spacesuit so shredded from years of damage it hardly held together any more. Hunks of hair had already been ripped away from his scalp, and the filthy strands that remained clung to one another and drifted out from his head in the microgravity. Jagged bones from broken limbs protruded from his sleeves. Nothing of him should have been able to hold together, and yet he hung in the dark, his grasp strong against her arm. He grinned wickedly, his lips parting company with the gums with decay. The necronaut spoke, and she knew she couldn’t hear him across the void of space, but the words reached her anyway._

_"From this planet, I intend to leave nothing. That includes you."_

_His other hand took hold of one metal finger, and pulled it back, with more force than she would have thought possible. It detached, and she screamed in pain. He held his hand out in front of his face, and tauntingly showed her the single digit between his fingers before releasing it to fall back down to the baking planet below._

_He snapped off two more, and she cried out with the pain, trying to lash out at him in defence. But as she swung one way her body twisted the other, and he easily dodged, wrapping her arm up behind her back to her shoulders, wracking pain all the way up her back and shoulders. Somehow the change in momentum had no effect over him, and he pulled her back toward him. Where his skin touched her, it clung to her metal frame for a moment in the slime of decay._

_He dismantled her. Joint by joint, he pulled her apart, and every motion sent fire through her limbs, every severance agonising. And she screamed until his fingers closed around the brass voicebox in her throat and ripped it away, and she could scream no more. His hand found her face, and he dug nails into her eyes until the glass cracked, waves of pain burning backward into her head. With the other hand, he punched through the base of her back, and claw-like he gripped onto the small sphere that powered her; her blue core. Eyes widening, she voicelessly pleaded._

_He tore the sphere from its binding, and her body briefly writhed with the agony before everything flashed black and silent, and familiar._

_Here, at least, there was no pain. Nothing was almost relief._

_But she was stuck here after a nightmare. She wanted to breathe heavily, but there was no air, and no lungs. She wanted to sob, but even as she tried to make the sound there was just nothing._

_Squeaks waited. There wasn’t anything she could do here but wait. She would come back into her body._

***

An hour later, Squeaks snapped her eyes open and gripped the arms of her chair. She was relieved at least to see that she was exactly where she had been left.

“Ow. Phyllisia?” she called, sitting up and looking about. A head rose from the bench nearby, previously bent over pages of notes, and then bounced into view as Phyllisia hurried over, worry creasing her brow.

“You’re back! I thought I’d done something horrendous!”

“Not your fault,” Squeaks muttered, rubbing her hand across her forehead. Her fingers were slightly sore, and she felt like her head was throbbing, “that happens to me now and then. If I’m honest I thought it had stopped, or I would've told you about it.”

“What happened? I thought the eyes had forced you to power down, or something.”

A vent of steam eased the ache in her head, and Squeaks sighed contently. She’d almost forgotten about the eyes, and how they were causing the gentle throbbing in her head.

She sat up, and looked properly at Phyllisia, testing for changes in visual quality. The difference was difficult to describe, but still palpable. Everything had been perfectly sharp before, but now she noticed the colours hadn’t been quite so deep. Her whole field of vision was analysed perhaps too precisely before, and Phyllisia had just been a pixel among many. Now, her vision seemed to focus itself, and ignore the insignificant clutter all around the periphery of her vision. When she looked at the human in front of her, she could concentrate on her face.

“It _might_ have been the eyes,” she replied, “everything _really_ hurt for a moment, and then everything shut down. Sorry about the screaming.”

“You didn’t make a sound,” Phyllisia looked no less concerned, “you just kind of froze up, and then you went limp. I tried to wake you up, but you didn’t respond.”

“I didn’t scream? I heard screaming.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

Instinctively, Squeaks put her hand up to her neck for comfort. Her fingers settled on the goggles. They were cold, and still.

She gripped them, but it was just the same. Panicking, she pulled them from her neck and held them in her hands, turning them over. The warmth and connection she felt all this time wasn’t there. They were just a pair of silver goggles.

“Did you touch these, while I was out?” She held them up to Phyllisia, apprehensive.

“No,” Phyllisia’s eyes darted down to them in confusion, like she’d only just noticed them, “Not intentionally. Did I scratch them, or something?”

“No, they’re-” she faltered, aware that Phyllisia would have no idea what she was talking about.

“How do the eyes look?” she said instead.

“Great,” Phyllisia said warily, “how do they feel?”

“I see what you mean about an improvement,” Squeaks let her hands settle in her lap, not letting go of the goggles. She knew something was wrong, but she’d have to go back to the Manor to ask Peter for his help, and that meant leaving as soon as she could. “The visuals are stunning. And pain is… everything I remember.”

“Are you in pain now?”

“Not particularly. Fingers hurt now. A little.” She held up the hand that Phyllisia had hit.

With a few more checks, Phyllisia sent her on her way. “I can’t get much more from you here. I need you to go back home and just continue as normal. I’ll arrange a meeting next week when we can review results thus far.”

Squeaks made it out into the midday sun, and now people did look at her. A handful looked over with distrust in their eyes, but for some reason after a moment or two her appearance would no longer present a threat, and they simply looked away again, uninterested. Squeaks hadn’t put her goggles back on, but carried them down the streets as she headed back to the Manor. She hoped she’d be able to find Peter before The Spine found her. She needed to talk to him, and soon.

The goggles were cold, but there was something else missing.

The hum in her mind had stopped.

Rachel’s memories had stopped flowing.

***

The sun was setting again by the time Squeaks was rolling up the road to the Manor, and she watched it rise out of the brush of the hill as she rounded the corner. She’d passed the hours searching her memory files, watching and waiting. Still nothing came. The memories dripping into her head hadn’t been particularly noticeable until recently, but now she knew what it felt like, its absence felt hollow.

As the hours passed by, she had become more afraid. The fact that the goggles were so still and her mind so silent at the same time only added weight to the theory that they were her link to Rachel. She wanted to hold on to the belief that she had no idea why they had fallen silent, but dread seeped in too quickly.

As she walked up to the door, she took a deep breath and reconnected her WiFi. Everything began to buzz softly, connections forming in her head. Not all, but some. And voices piled into her head as messages from the others managed to flow in, sent over the hours she’d been away.

_Yo Squeaker!_ came Zero’s voice, _Guess what I found in this box?!_

_I’m done at the duck pond. Where’d you go?_ Rabbit’s wasn’t far behind.

_Squeaker? Squeaky?_

_Anyone there?_

And a few more, curious about where she’d gone to. Zero’s messages promised that the moment she returned he’d found something to make her smile. But nothing from The Spine, not after the contact that had driven her out. When he’d had no response, he’d sent nothing more.

She crossed the entrance hall, which was silent and empty, to the lift down to Delilah. She pressed the button, but nothing happened. It must still have been sealed off to the robots. For the first time, Squeaks wondered what Peter was keeping down there. Something new, perhaps? A newer robot? The legs he’d promised to build her, and still not finished?

The ramps she used to climb the stairs were still in place, and so she made her way up to his more frequented laboratories. It was still quiet.

That was until Rabbit emerged from a room to her right, clutching a huge cardboard box, and walked straight into the side of her. Squeaks grunted a little as the movement knocked her painfully into the hard stone wall.

“Who’s that?” Rabbit called out, her voice muffled against the cardboard. Squeaks could just see her arms protruding around the sides, and her hat, which for some reason she’d placed on top of the box.

“Just me.”

“Oh, I wondered where you’d got to!” Rabbit lowered the box to the floor, and lifted a few items from the top, “l-l-l-look what I found!”

On closer inspection the box was a little old, and chewed at the corners by mice. Rabbit was holding out a few items from the top of the box; a Barbie doll in one hand, and a lava lamp in the other (which Squeaks was less than surprised to find was filled with blue glowing lava).

“I found an old box! There’s some really neat stuff in here – wanna come help me look through it?”

“Maybe later. I need to talk to Peter, have you seen him?”

Rabbit shook the lava lamp and looked at it thoughtfully. She seemed not at all worried that Squeaks had vanished for well over a day. “Now you mention it, not really. Think I saw him in the kitchen yesterday making a sandwich.”

Squeaks felt a flash of irritation and disbelief. It was so _difficult_ to find anyone in this place!

“Alright,” she huffed, “I'll find him.”

“There's photo albums in here,” Rabbit waggled her eyebrows, “pictures of Petey in diapers.”

“I'm sure,” Squeaks answered with disinterest. “I'll come and find you later,” and she began rolling away back down the corridor. If Rabbit hadn't seen Peter, she reckoned she knew exactly where he'd got to.

“Squeaky?”

“ _Yes,_ Rabbit?”

“Call in on Spine, maybe.  Fancy boy missed you.”

With another little twinge, Squeaks nearly told her to shove off. But she pressed her lips together and kept walking.

Once again, something was wrong, and once again she was scared. Squeaks was getting a little fed up of being scared. She was trying to tell herself that installing her eyes had just knocked something loose, and everything would be alright when it was reconnected. But Peter hadn't known what made the memories flow in the first place. She had a fairly good idea where Peter had gone.

Back in the entrance hall, she tried pushing the lift button again, knowing full well it would do nothing. When nothing happened, she crossed her arms stubbornly and leaned back against the wall as she waited. He'd come up sometime.

She was frustrated. She was worried. Even so, she still found her eyes flitting to the stairway above in case she had to dart out of sight. Her anxiousness over The Spine’s attitude had begun to fade, but it was being steadily replaced with the feeling that she should be angry with him all the same.

Another 40 minutes passed, during which she busied herself setting up a binary system in her head of two black holes. Gravity waves thankfully took up much of her operating capacity, which stopped her thinking about too much else.

The lift doors opened unexpectedly, and Peter emerged holding a small white mouse carefully on his hand. He jumped when Squeaks lifted her head to him.

“You've got to stop sneaking up on me like that,” he said, attempting to walk past her.

“It gets your attention.” She lifted an arm to block his path, “Peter, something's wrong. The memories have stopped downloading.”

“They stopped?”

“And the goggles-” she went to close a hand about her neck, but it closed on nothing. She lifted her other hand, where she was still carrying them by the strap.

“I haven't seen you take those off willingly in months.”

“They feel weird. I think I might've knocked a connection or wrecked some code, or something.”

“Have you tried turning off and on again?” Peter said immediately. She glared at him.

“What? You might just need a reboot,” he added defensively.

“Fine. Don't you go anywhere.” She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

“Uhm,” she heard, “I've got this mouse…”

“I’m sure the mouse can wait.”

With a series of beeps, everything went quiet. Except for the infernal clock constantly ticking in her head. Somewhere in the back of Squeaks’ mind, Rachel was there, remembering nostalgically when time was more flexible. ‘Losing track of time’ was a distant memory.

With more familiar noises, she was awake again, and lifted her goggles up.

“No change.”

Peter sighed. The mouse started crawling along his hand, and he lifted his thumb for it to nibble on anxiously.

“Let's get you up to a lab, then. I don't promise I can fix it, but maybe if I can see what's changed we can work out what's been going on.”

He checked everything over, as usual. And nothing was wrong, as usual.

“So what happened? Did it click off, just like that?”

Squeaks rubbed one hand over the back of the other. She couldn't very well tell him what she'd been doing, and ruin Phyllisia’s experiment less than a day after it started. But selfishly she wondered why Peter hadn't seemed to notice she'd been gone, much like Rabbit.

“I had another blackout,” she said instead, which was technically true.

“Another one? Anything happen to kick it off?”

“No.” That one was probably a lie. Feeling pain in every inch of your body was probably enough to ‘kick it off’. Squeaks knew that the current avenue of conversation was useless until she could tell Peter what had happened, which at least she could in a couple of weeks.

Peter tried a few more things, but nothing seemed to make any difference. Eventually, he shook his head.

“I think the best we can do is wait and see,” he said with frustration, “and hope that the link comes back online.”

“Hopefully. Maybe she's just… Out of range? Gone somewhere with no signal.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Squeaks fidgeted with her fingers.

“Peter, I'm worried about Rachel,” she blurted out, voicing something that had begun to gnaw away at her, “what if something's happened to her?”

“I'm worried too. But all this time we've assumed the link only goes one way. Maybe she got fed up with _your_ memories and broke the link? Or maybe it finally got too weak. It has been several months, the link might've just broken down.”

“Could we just call her and check she's OK?”

“I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Peter-”

“-what would I say? ‘Hi, Rachel, are you OK, just checking because my robot's memory subscription stopped working’?” He said sarcastically.

“You know you _can_ stop after ‘Hi’.”

Peter rubbed the chin of his mask.

“I still think it's a bad idea. Give it a few days. It might come back.”

“And if it doesn't?”

“Well, let's go from there.”

***

Squeaks started to wonder why she ever went for checks at all. Any problems she had only ever went unresolved. So, as ever, she went to find someone to take her mind off her frustration.

Rabbit hadn't moved from where she'd left her, sat cross-legged in the hallway pulling things out of the cardboard box she'd found earlier. Two small mountains had formed on her left and right, as she pulled something out, looked at it for a while, probably broke it in the process, and thrown it to one side or the other. But now there was a large, burgundy file in her lap, which she was leafing through slowly and lovingly.

She looked up as Squeaks rounded the corner, and lifted the file in her direction.

“Look, Squeaks! It’s Th’Jon! Oh, he was so young…”

Now she was closer, Squeaks could see that Rabbit was holding a large, very thick photo album. The picture that caught her attention was of a spindly, brass robot with long curly hair, stood in a grassy park and beaming at the camera with a thumb tucked under his braces and a tall, feathered top hat. In age he looked much the same as Rabbit, given that they were practically ageless. But the photo was small and almost square, and the colours were jaded.

“How long ago was that?”

Rabbit turned the picture back to look at it, twitching her mouth to one side thoughtfully.

“Must’a been… the sixties.”

Looking closer, Squeaks saw that the hand not tucked under his braces was stretched out in a ‘peace’ sign. He was also wearing bell-bottom trousers and a pair of small, round-eyed John Lennon glasses.

“Those were good times,” she sighed happily, flicking through the pages. “Look, there’s ‘Spine and me!”

Squeaks leaned against the wall next to Rabbit as she pointed out the photograph. Two robots were grinning back without a care, one with a very familiar handsome silver face. The other was copper, with a toothy grin and a much more metallic, masculine face than Squeaks was used to seeing. They were both sporting the same sunglasses The Jon had been wearing, and both had their shirt unbuttoned almost to their waists, exposing the metal underneath. And both had bright blue eyes.

“Who's that?” Squeaks pointed at the copper robot.

“Oh, that's me.”

“No, the male bot.”

“Still me. My chassis was different back then, that's all.”

“Oh, OK. What's with the outfits?”

“They were hip in those days! That was like forty years ago… Just you be glad Spine didn't buy the afro.”

Squeaks barely held back a chuckle, “an _afro?!_ ”

“He was very taken by it.”

The mental image of The Spine with a huge, black afro and his fedora perched ludicrously on top was enough to make Squeaks laugh aloud, and Rabbit smiled appreciatively. She showed Squeaks through more pictures, leafing back to some she'd been looking at before Squeaks turned up. Smiling pictures of the robots that could have been taken yesterday, but the human faces accompanying them got younger and younger the further she flicked back, and the colours faded through yellow to black and white. And other metal faces appeared occasionally that Squeaks couldn't begin to name. There was one of Rabbit, apparently in about 1918, trying her very first moonpie. Her eyes were as wide and shining as Squeaks had ever seen.

She flicked forward to the sixties again in pursuit of a photo of ‘that time she built a tower of moonpies thi-i-is tall and then ate them all’, and pointed out a few pictures along the way. One of a handsome young man and a woman Rabbit called ‘Peter and Holly’, another of the same young man enrobed in an astronaut suit… Rabbit paused sadly and explained how he'd died tragically in space.

“This was before he becomes a terrifying space-beast and tries to destroy the planet. Such a nice boy.”

She flicked forward again in pursuit of her photo without much success, past pages of blue-eyed Rabbits and Spines and Jons in parks and recording studios and very silly clothes.

The contrast as she turned the next page was palpable.

The Rabbit that looked out from the book no longer sporting a widely manic grin, but instead looked up with a muted smile and more familiar oddball-coloured eyes. The Jon just looked faintly confused. The Spine wasn't there at all.

When he did reappear, he remained in the background. He was more the man Squeaks knew. A charming, but subdued smile. A smart black suit, a red tie, and a black fedora worn low over unmistakable green eyes. In several pictures his arms were folded and his head bowed to hind his face from the camera entirely. Squeaks remembered what Rabbit had said by the graveyard - it had taken The Spine years to settle when he came back from war.

“Was there a gap in these photos?” Squeaks cut in.

“Sure. We were out in ‘nam. _That_ one was…” Rabbit picked out a photo of her and a pink robot fighting over a tiara, and looked at the back, “1977. I bet that tiara’s in here, somewhere.”

As she passed the album to Squeaks to start rifling through the box again, Squeaks made a connection so obvious it made an almost audible click.

Forty years ago…

Vietnam happened about forty years ago.

The robots got captured, and tortured.

And Spine told her that he'd been disconnected.

_Forty years ago._

“Where's The Spine?” she said quickly, shoving the album back into Rabbit's hands.

“I don't know why you keep asking me where everybody is," Rabbit said, her voice muffled as her head was still in the box with her arm outstretched to take the album, "You usually know better than me.”

“Fine. I gotta go.” Squeaks zapped away, knowing full well that Rabbit was right, and the first place to look was the HOW.

“Attagirl,” Rabbit called after her, not looking up from her box.

***

_1973_

_Rabbit was still bolted to the table, tilted up towards the door. The Spine had made his way towards him and started looking around the floor._

_“Wait,” he said simply. He sounded like Rabbit felt. Dry, scratched, broken, and hurting real bad._

_He bent down, and came up holding something at his side. He dropped it on the table, where it slid down the incline and clattered on the floor. He looked at it, puzzled, and picked it up again. Rabbit's vision was too blurry to see what it was, but it was long and thin, and The Spine put it down on Rabbit's right side, this time holding it in place, now that he remembered how gravity worked._

_The best he could do was tie some exposed wires together to keep it from falling off the table again, and find the most crucial wires to strip and tie again. As sensation burned down Rabbit's side, he recognised it was his right arm. He couldn't move it much - it had mostly rusted in place, and it was connected quickly and poorly, but he could move his fingers a little, and his wrist could just about turn. He knew a little sign language from years gone by._

_‘Spine,’ he managed to signal._

_“Yes.”_

_Hey Spine, old buddy, you found me, he wanted to say. I guess I'm looking a little the worse for the wear, but you found me._

_But that was too much effort with the fingers of one hand. So instead, he went with, ‘broken’._

_“Yes,” said The Spine again._

_‘Can't see. You broken?’_

_“Yes.”_

_He wanted to say, Spine, you're bein’ a bit short with me. Cat got your tongue? Clearly you got a lot to tell me. How did you get out? Is the war over? Where is everybody?_

_‘Free?’ he managed instead._

_“Yes.”_

_‘How?’_

_The Spine had to think about that for a while._

_“Army. They're dead.”_

_They couldn't all be dead. He must be talking about their captors._

_‘Everyone?’_

_“Yes.”_

_‘We leave.’_

_The Spine looked down at Rabbit's broken body, all over the floor._

_“How?”_

_‘Cart?’_

_The Spine walked out, and to Rabbit's surprise managed to return pushing an industrial trolley ahead of him._

_“Cart.” The Spine repeated helpfully._

_He began to pick up pieces he recognised from the floor. A copper hand here. A curved plate there. The small parts took a long time; he had to crouch on his hands and knees to find as many gears and springs as he could. Rabbit was sure he didn't need them, Peter could pick up any number of new shiny gears. But The Spine seemed intent on collecting as much of his brother off the floor as he could manage._

_When he was satisfied, he stood and walked to Rabbit, and put his arms about his shoulders to lift him._

_Pain arched through Rabbit's back as The Spine pulled upward and bent the plate attaching his back to the table. He signalled rapidly to stop, though he wasn't sure if Spine even saw._

_‘Bolted down,’ he signed, when Spine stepped back._

_“Damnit,” The Spine muttered, and he wondered off. It took a while, but he came back with a few wrenches of different sizes to try and set Rabbit free, and disappeared round behind the table. As he unscrewed the bolts, the vibrations sent ripples of pain through Rabbit's back again, but he didn't complain, partly because he couldn't._

_With a ripping noise, something slipped free and Rabbit slid down the table, crumpling at the bottom. The Spine whipped round apologetically._

_“Sorry.” He was managing a lot of very brief answers. Rabbit wondered if The Spine felt pain now, too. His voicebox sounded dry and scratchy, and maybe it just really hurt to talk. Then again, Rabbit wondered whether they'd been here long enough that The Spine had just forgotten how to talk properly._

_He picked Rabbit up, and carefully dropped his torso on the pile of Rabbit-shaped scrap in the trolley. For the first time, Rabbit realised that The Spine’s hands were wet._

_‘The Jon?’ he signed, when The Spine was looking his way._

_“Don't know,” The Spine answered, pushing the trolley out of the room. “Find him.”_

_He pushed them down one silent corridor, and another. The compound was quiet as the grave, and the sound of the trolley's squeaky wheel bounced down the corridor in a way that was almost disrespectful. Rabbit slowly grew more grateful that his vision was currently limited. He couldn't see a lot, but a lot of what he did see, lying against the edges of the corridor and painted over the walls, was blood-red. His olfactory sensory input was still functional, and the smell of iron was unmistakable._

_He rolled his eyes up to The Spine’s hands, which were a blurry red and silver. That would explain why they felt wet._

_‘They died,’ he asked simply._

_“Yes.”_

_Poor Spine, he would've said. You're covered in blood. You tried to revive them. What did you see? How many lives did you try to save today? Did you lose them all? Will you ever tell me? I think I heard you crying when you found them._

_‘You helped?’_

_The tall silvery blur didn't answer for a moment._

_“Yes.”_

_*****_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So firstly firstly, inspiration for BI taken from a page of Bunny Bennett’s comic, here: https://steampoweredgiraffe.com/comic/comic/page-9/
> 
> I see BI as the polar opposite of Walter Robotics. Clean. Sharp. Corporate. Heavily centred on financial gain, or possibly world domination (if that leads to financial gain). It’s all about the money, money, money.
> 
> Secondly secondly, for anyone who cares about physical locations, I’ve always assumed Walter Manor was based somewhere uphill and nearby to San Diego. So I dotted around Google Maps, and I reckon it would be somewhere just over Mother Miguel Mountain. Becile, meanwhile, I would have thought was not far from the San Diego Hall of Juctice, which isn’t all that far from Balboa theatre. The reason I looked this up is because I needed to know how far Squeaks had to travel. I make that about 20 miles, or about a 7 hour walk through the night.
> 
> Also apologies if I've referred to the US army incorrectly here. I'm not sure what's correct. I feel like I trivialise a lot in here, but that's for ease of speed, more than anything else.
> 
> Also, I’m hoping everyone was a tad uncomfortable because you’ve heard of Becile before and you don’t know why Squeaks is so damn chill. Easy one to answer; she still only has partial memories, and no-one’s got round to explaining them to her. Never came up. She’s got no reason to think any less of them. If I had more time, and believe me I really do not have more time, I'd delve further into what differences I imagine for the Becile and Walter robots, and how the public treat them. I've briefly touched on it here, in the public's reactions, but the full thing would be a massive, somewhat Asimov-ian tangent to the story I've got.
> 
> ALSO sixties The Jon.


	24. It seemed like it’d never end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks, haunted by these Nothing nightmares and stubborn mule that she is, decides that she's not leaving The Spine alone until he reveals a little backstory. 
> 
> That description might be a tad meta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looooong time coming, this one.
> 
> TLL 07/04/18

Squeaks left the Hall Of Wires a little giddy, and closed the door gently behind her. Her head was a little swimmy, and she was smiling stupidly to herself. As she meandered down the hallways, she even felt in the spirit to twirl around on a wheel. She did it a couple more times, humming dreamily as she went, to practice the knack of not rolling straight into a wall.

This, she decided, needed girl-time.

So she took her time rolling back towards the box where Rabbit had been, and followed the trail of pieces of moonpie to find Rabbit, sat happily munching, on the floor in a large utility cupboard, holding a moonpie wrapper from about 1986.

“You're back!” Rabbit mumbled, somewhat indistinctly, “Didja find Spine?”

“I did,” Squeaks answered, and her smile barely cracked.

Rabbit recognised the doe-eyed look, and raised her eyebrows, “...and?”

“I… might’ve kissed him.”

***

_A short while earlier…_

Squeaks had worked something out. She was sure she had. And wheeling towards the Hall of Wires so fast it made her wheels ache, she drew some conclusions.

She adored The Spine. Everyone had damn well worked that out. And there were secrets he had to keep, and if he wasn't about to explain them, then _fine_. But she was fed up with avoiding him in case she found out he _had_ wanted to shut her down. She wanted to know why.

If it didn't go well, screw it. She didn't have to stay here. She was going to Kazooland, anyway.

She reached the door, grabbed the handle. The door bounced open on the frame and she wheeled into the dim red light, and her eyes latched onto those of The Spine, who was turning in surprise from the console against the wall. With her new eyes, the whole world seemed like it centred in on him in that moment.

Instinct begged her to stop there, but she pushed forward.

_Ah, screw it._

“Squeaks! I thought you-”

He was too damn tall. She grabbed hold of his tie, and pulled him down to her level with one fluid movement, and pressed her lips to his.

She closed her eyes, and wrapped a hand around the back of her his head to hold him close.

Damn, it was good. He was warm and his lips were soft, and there were waves of relief and frustration and fear and pleasure, and it presented itself via a cloud of steam that burst from behind her face plates, and he wasn't pulling away, and she pulled him closer and kissed him harder until it hurt, but she didn't care.

She let go of his tie and pulled back, and saw that he was bent almost double, his face a gorgeous tableau of utter bemusement.

They watched each other guardedly for a few moments, neither one moving.

“I have questions,” she said, when he said nothing.

“Alright,” he deliberated. He stood up slowly, but his eyes didn't leave hers, “I guess I have questions, too.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“I - ok. What… Do you… Should we get a drink, or something?”

“Maybe later. Can we talk now? Do you have chairs, or something?”

“I could - Does the wire canopy creep you out?”

He pointed upwards, at the organised mess of cabling that hung like a circus tent all around the room.

“Not especially. Why?”

He nodded at the canopy, and four wires descended from it, picking them both up under the arms and carefully lifting them from the floor. Passing through a gap, there turned out to be a sizeable space above the wiring, and the wires dropped them gently on to what was now a kind of wire hammock, hidden high in the roof space, where they couldn't be seen from the room below. They were sat, side by side, and Squeaks turned to see The Spine seeming to wait for her approval.

“You have questions?”

She opened her mouth to ask about what QWERTY had told her. But no. Not yet.

“How long were you disconnected for?”

A glimmer in his eyes vanished instantly. “Oh. This again. That's not where I thought you were going.”

“Yes, this again.”

“Squeaks-”

She cut in by firing a request at him to open permissions for a conversation they had not too long ago. He accepted almost in surprise.

“It took me a while, but I'm not stupid. Spine, you got green eyes in Vietnam. Rabbit told me so. Forty years back? And you were disconnected forty years back? Tell me those things aren't related.”

His face was frozen.

“Why is Rabbit telling you stuff like that?”

“Dunno. Maybe she knew I was upset with you.”

“Why _is_ that, by the way?”

“We'll come back to that.”

There was a long silence as they stared each other down, both jaws set. He could be stubborn, but so could she.

“Why do you care,” he said darkly, “about something that happened to me years before your time?”

“Spine, I was disconnected too. For a few seconds, and as a result apparently I just stop functioning for hours on end. I told you, and in return you locked my memories down. I've told you _everything_ that's happened to me. I serve you my memories on a silver platter. And you-”

“-I don't owe you anything.”

“I never said you did! Something happened, a long time ago, and as far as I can tell you came home and haven't talked to anyone about it since because… Because you're afraid, or something? Because you don't think anyone can relate to it? Well I'm telling you that I _care._ I _want to know._ Because I've felt it, and I'm afraid of how much worse it gets. I'm afraid of what it is that you've been through.”

They shared another long, hard look.

“QWERTY, are you here?” he said, without looking away.

“OF COURSE.”

“Stop recording the conversation. Go somewhere else, for a while.”

She didn't reply, but the room went quiet.

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes,” The Spine repeated. “Green eyes and the disconnection. They happened at the same time.”

“In Vietnam?”

“Yes.”

“Rabbit said they experimented on you.”

“They did. I left in one piece. She didn't.”

Squeaks waited, and said nothing. And that was all that happened, for a long time. Just letting him think. At some point, he lifted his hand, and knitted his fingers with hers.

“Before I say anything else, I need you to understand something.”

“Alright.”

“Don't get it into your head that I don't tell people what happened to me because I'm… defensive or precious. It's because I have to. And don't think that the things I do, I do because I know what I'm doing.”

“Ok.”

“There are things I keep to myself. That I've _had_ to keep to myself for a very long time, because if I don't, then people die.”

“Like the Vice Quadrant.”

He nodded.

“If I tell you this, it goes no further.”

The request felt its way into her mind, snipping the conversation short, the end point to be determined. She approved it, knowing that when they were finished neither of them would be able to discuss the conversation with anyone else.

And then he leaned towards her, and gently kissed her. There was none of her urgency. He was more patient. The touch was long, and lingering. And then he pulled away, and dropped his gaze.

“Five years.”

“Wh… What?”

“That's how long.”

“Five _years_?”

He nodded, not looking up.

She went to speak, but for a moment there was nothing to say.

Then another.

“I… I'm sorry. I had no idea…”

“No. But you still asked.”

“Why so long?”

“I don't know,” he said, sourly. “I've wondered often enough. But I still don't know.”

He fell silent again, and began rubbing a thumb over the back of her hand.

“What happened out there?” Squeaks thought, and added, “I'm sorry. I should stop asking.”

He shook his head, and lifted a hand to his fedora, which he removed and put down beside him.

The top and back of his head were made of a single piece of smoked glass. Underneath, Squeaks could just see the movements of interconnected gears and springs. In this light, he began to look old and tired.

Squeaks thought back to the pictures in the old album. Before Vietnam, The Spine often swapped out his hat for something else, if he fancied. After, he wore that hat in every picture. It occurred to her that she'd never seen him without it before. It cast a shadow over his face, and always covered his eyes. She had assumed he just thought it made him look dashing. But without it, she could see that what made his eyes look so tired were the engraved lines all around them.

Tiny scratches were scored all around the metal.

“We were captured during our mission out there. Taken to the compound and locked up in different rooms. Almost the first thing they did to me was to pry out my eyes. They used to be blue, years ago.”

The Spine looked away, fidgeting with the edge of his hat.

“I don't usually do this around other people. I'm not a fan of the scars.”

Squeaks squeezed his hand, “They left you blind?”

“For about a week. Sometimes I think they were trying to get to the blue matter, to study it or something. But whatever it was, maybe they didn't find it, so they cut my core out instead.”

“And then -”

“And then there was nothing. For a long time.” He grimaced, “a _very_ long time. I can't… It was hideous.”

Squeaks nearly said that she knew what he was talking about, but stopped herself short. Five years. With no sound, sight, touch. Nothing but the darkness. She had no idea.

“I'd have gone mad,” she whispered.

For a while he just sat, one hand protectively on his hat.

“I think maybe I did. Eventually someone _did_ come looking for us. They attacked the compound, and got to me first. Plugged me back in, but the compound had refitted me with green eyes before I even woke up-”

He stopped short, his face now contorted like Squeaks had never seen.

“I assume Rabbit told you what these mean,” he said, gesturing towards his eyes, but the sneer that accompanied the movement was one of repulsion at his own predicament. She nodded silently.

“It's all I remember, when I was reconnected. Just pain. Everywhere. I couldn't see through it.” He had to look away, then, as his voice began to fry involuntarily. His grip on Squeaks hand had tightened, and his eyes were dark with surplus oil. “It subsided, eventually.”

“Rabbit said you rescued her,” Squeaks continued, “that no-one survived the firefight to get you.”

He nodded, his face torn in disgust, “No-one was left alive. I'd never seen so many bodies in one place. There was blood-” he stopped abruptly, before he painted the whole grim picture. “Rabbit was so destroyed I had to carry the pieces out in a trolley.”

He made a noise like he was clearing his throat, and turned away again for a few moments. He rubbed a hand over his face, and didn't turn back until he was calmer, and his eyes clear of oil. When he spoke again, his voice had settled back to its normal velvet quality.

“I maybe wasn't as nice to you as I could have been when you got here. I want you to know that wasn't your fault.”

“I assumed you didn't like me.”

“I _liked_ you just fine. But I didn't know Peter had been mucking about with blue matter cores. Yelled at him quite a bit for that.”

He paused to shift guiltily in place.

“I've never told the others because it didn't seem fair on them to know. But disconnected all that time on my own, I did have time to think. Developed a kind of theory.

“I spent a long time thinking I was dead. After a while I didn't think I was coming back. Maybe it was worse when I did. But it made me think about this core we have. Humans have souls, right?”

“Some would tell you that.”

“I started to think maybe we have something like it.” His hand lifted to the centre of his chest, to about the same height as a human heart - where his core was housed - “A part of me that's still left when you take everything else away, that's still me. I think our blue matter becomes sentient when it bonds, and becomes us. When I was disconnected, I thought that was it. I was stuck like that, forever. And I remember that all. Squeaks, we will die some day.”

“You were the one who told me that was a long time away.”

“I was being flippant. I'm _petrified_ that when we do eventually go down… That's it. We're stuck in that place for ever. That's why I was so angry.”

“Is that… QWERTY told me that you tried to get me shut down.”

His lips tightened, “can no-one keep anything to themselves in this place? Yes, I tried. I thought, maybe it wasn't too late. I didn't want Peter making someone else like us. People with blue souls that are just… stuck like that. Forever.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The pieces all started falling into place. He hadn't hated her. He was just trying to protect her from what he thought they would all some day become; bodyless, sightless beings, forever self-aware and unable to do anything but wait.

“Maybe - if that's true - you forget who you were after a while,” she mused. She was unsure whether she was trying to persuade The Spine or herself, as she began to recognise the fear of going back into the Nothing. Permanently.

“Maybe. Although however long it takes, it's longer than I waited. I _wanted_ to forget, but I didn't. I never want to wait that long again. But I'll have to,” he grimaced.

Squeaks shuffled closer, and put an arm around behind his back in comfort. He rested his chin on top of her head, and put his arm around her as well. He was still as warm and solid as he had been before.

“You should've told someone about this,” she said gently.

“I think I tried,” he answered, “but the others don't have any frame of reference. And… They're not afraid of what's to come. They don't know. I hate knowing. I never wanted to lump this on them before I have to.”

“Well, why not the Walters? Surely they could find out what would happen in the end.”

“I'm not sure that they could. They're good scientists, but while blue matter’s a brilliant energy source, beyond the coalescence there's no real physical evidence to support my theory. It's just… matter. And it's dangerous enough for humans to work with in the first place.”

Squeaks sighed thoughtfully, and rubbed her thumb over his shoulder. It made her believe he'd spent enough time worrying about this on his own to make up for the others not ever knowing.

“It might be something else entirely,” Squeaks said tentatively. “There's an old funeral tradition that, well, I suppose Rachel must have heard of. The body is burned on a pyre, and when it's mostly cremated, someone breaks the skull open. In part, they say it's to release the spirit of the deceased.”

“I'm not sure what you're driving at.”

“I'm just saying that all your matter is contained in your core. Maybe you and I have seen disconnection the way we do because the matter is still contained. What if - when this all goes down - we just need to be released? What if we only escape when our core is destroyed?”

The Spine thought for a moment, and just held her close.

“We still don't have any evidence either way. But I hadn't thought of that.”

“Well, remembering what you told me, it's not something we have to plan for just yet.” She pulled away from his chest to look up at him, and for a moment he almost smiled, “there's other things to do before that.”

She rested her head again, and with a little snip, the invitation was closed, blocking them both from discussing any of it. The Spine sighed.

“You were never going to let me be until I told you, were you?”

“I guess not. But I was scared. I wanted to know why.”

“You're stubborn.”

“Probably.”

He lightly squeezed her shoulder, and she looked up into his face. “So can I ask questions now?”

“I think that's fair.”

“What's _this_ about?” he rubbed his hand down her arm in demonstration.

“I think that depends. Do you like it?”

“I do,” he said, his voice a little softer.

Squeaks paused, just watching him. “Can it happen again?”

“Can we talk about something nicer next time?”

She nodded, smiling slowly.

“Then yes. I think it could.”

He smiled back at her, and she felt his hand run along her jaw to lift her face to his, and, blissfully, he kissed her once again.

***

Rabbit let out a squeal like a boiling kettle.

“Ohmuygawsh! And then what happened?!”

She was sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Squeaks with her fists balled up with excitement and a silver tiara atop her head. Mismatched eyes gleamed with expectant joy.

“Then… we talked for a while.”

“You - ya _talked?_ What kind of hopeless romantics are you?”

Squeaks shrugged, although she was still smiling inanely, “we had a lot to talk about.”

“Well did he tell you he loves ya?”

“Wha- Rabbit, this isn't like fairy stories. Or Mills and Boon. That doesn't just _happen_ right away.”

Rabbit inhaled sharply, “ooh, he _didn't_ say it. That's much worse.”

“Look, we're just enjoying each other's company at the moment. We'll see how it goes.”

Rabbit huffed, but looked hopeful at an afterthought.

“Well did you at _least_ kiss him again when you were done ‘talking’?”

Squeaks could hear the quote marks in Rabbit's voice and, quite frankly, couldn't care less. She pinched the bridge of her nose, where she was rediscovering headaches.

“Yes, ma’am. I certainly did.”

***

The weird hole hadn't disappeared. It was also going nowhere, doing nothing, and hadn't tried to swallow the building yet. Thus, Peter got bored, and moved on to his next project.

If Squeaks fancied a trip to Kazooland, that he could do. But wheel-proofing the Manor was one thing. He needed to make her some proper legs if she was to make it further than 50 feet out of the portal.

Legs took time and effort. They needed to be _exactly_ the same length as one another or the recipient ended up walking in large circles*. They required the proper setup of gyros, algorithms, moving parts, yada yada, all customised to Squeaks’ diminutive stature. It was a pain to get the gait right. The Spine had been walking funny for over a hundred years, although he'd had enough updates that by now Peter suspected it was habit.

He got to work, and wondered how far he'd get before she rolled back in having broken something else.

“Hey Peter?”

Thought too soon. Although that was a voice too bassy for Squeaks. He didn't bother turning to the doorway.

“Can I help you, Zero?”

“Yeah, see, I went to put this ice-cream in the microwave - this really nice chocolate cone, here - and Rabbit made me laugh so the little dially thingy just came off in my hand, just like that, so the microwave wouldn't stop so I tried feeding it ice-cream to see if it would help, Peter, but I don't think the microwave was very hungry and, Peter, it went bang and now it's really quiet and what do you think is wrong with it?”

As he spoke, the strange but unmistakable odour of burnt dairy products and acrid molten plastic curled under the edges of Peter's mask.

He sighed.

*****

*which most humans do anyway. Peter made a note to measure human leg lengths for future research.

*****

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FANSHIP AHOY.
> 
> So first of all, very important, for the sake of science I must point out that Peter is correct: in the absence of visual cues, humans don't walk in a straight line (https://www.livescience.com/33431-why-humans-walk-circles.html). That said, uneven leg length has already been discounted as the cause for this. I still think it's funny.
> 
> Anyway, that's the big important lump of stuff I wanted you to see. There's always been this suggestion around that The Spine is that bit closer to human, so it came to me that, well, one of the most human things you can have is a genuine fear of death. Robots aren't afraid of death, why would they be? Perhaps if you gave them the complex that something happens afterwards.   
> Oh, and a sweet wardrobe helps, too.


	25. Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Squeaks and The Spine spend a rather pleasant time with one another. This chapter is briefly steamy, for which I will not apologise! :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 14/4/18  
> TLL

“This?”

“Ow.”

“How about this?”

“ _Ow. Yes_ , Squeaks, it hurts wherever you do that.”

The next morning The Spine had woken Squeaks and asked whether she would care to join him watching the sun rise from the hill, already smartly dressed in a long black coat and an open-collar shirt that only served to make him all the more dapper. So now, they were sat on the hill from which they had watched the lights of the city before, The Spine’s arm wrapped around her, and he was letting her jab him with a metal finger to find out where he detected pain. It turned out to be pretty much anywhere, if she poked hard enough.

She booped him on the nose for good measure, and he narrowed his eyes at her.

“Considering that I brought you out to see the sunrise, you're not paying a lot of attention to it.”

“No,” she answered with a smile, “I'm not.”

“Well did you want to watch it or not?” he asked, almost with bemusement.

“It makes a good backdrop.” She looked over the Manor to the East; the city was behind them, and they were high enough here that they could just see the horizon over the top of the roofs of the Manor, but not by much. The sky was beginning to mellow from a deep blue, but over her shoulder she could still just see starlight over the city. Off in the distance, she noticed for the first time, she could now discern a small green light that was the Becile Industries logo at the top of its tower. She wondered whether she hadn't spotted it before, or whether her improved vision made it easier to focus on.

The Spine turned his head to see where she was looking.

“So you went away a couple days ago. Go anywhere nice?” he asked conversationally.

Something small and surprisingly bitter answered first, “I'm not trapped in the Manor. I can leave if I want.”

“Of course you can. I was just curious.”

“Oh. Nowhere in particular,” she lied, “I just wanted to see San Diego.” She smiled to herself. The green eyes were becoming her own little surprise. Maybe she could be the conduit to get the Walter and Becile companies to work more favourably together.

“Do you like it?”

“It's alright,” she said truthfully, “I went and watched the sea for a while.”

She turned to look back at the sunrise, but bashed noses halfway round with The Spine, who had moved in to kiss her.

He twisted away to rub his nose, and she was glad he had, because her eyes briefly oiled up with the stinging pain. Turned out he had a very hard nose.

“Do you want to try that again?” she offered when he looked up, and he gratefully leaned in and touched his lips to hers.

“I'm not sure I get it,” she began cautiously when he pulled back again and gingerly rubbed his nose, “wearing those eyes causes pain. Why d’you keep them?”

“There's benefits too.”

“Enough to make them worthwhile?”

“For me,” he nodded.

She remembered what Rabbit said about it making him feel more human. He was a robot, trying to be a human, and Squeaks felt more like a human trying to be a robot… she wondered if they were meeting in the middle somewhere.

And she began to believe him about the benefits as the light above them began to soften to a gentle tropical amber, and colours started splitting across the sky. With these eyes, the colours seemed deeper, truer. Her field of view was so much wider if she wanted it to be - although she quickly found out from the fuzzy blue halo at the edges of her vision that, to her chagrin, what she could see was _still_ limited by the irises of her blue eye-caps.

She'd never seen a sunrise over the horizon before. She was used to buildings getting in the way. But as the top of the sun began to peek over the edge, she saw the appeal.

There was a power to it. A majesty that would've been breathtaking, if she had breath. The light seemed to _push_ its way into the landscape and everything was bathed in a yellow hue. There was the added bonus that apparently as the sun pressed higher, Squeaks didn't have to shield her eyes from it. They weren't sensitive to excessive light.

She sighed happily.

The Spine made a noise of agreement, and rested his head on hers.

“This is nice,” he said simply.

He had his other arm propped up on his knee, and Squeaks responded by tentatively reaching out to brush the back of her hand across his. After a moment, he took it, brought it closer and kissed it, before letting their clasped hands drop between them.

“I hate to point it out,” he muttered, without looking away from the sunlight, “but I think we're being watched.”

In one of the attic windows, there were four floating points of light, three blue and one green, set against the black backdrop of an unlit room, staring quietly but unwaveringly in their direction.

“Should we tell them to go away?”

The Spine rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the back of her hand.

“We could. But I reckon we could make them _go_ away.”

“Um. How?” Squeaks found herself slightly nervous.

After a moment, during which the lights at the window did not move, The Spine took his hand from hers and brought it up to the side of her face, seeming to seek permission in her eyes. He pulled her close, lips meeting again, carefully tilting his head so their view of the the Manor was unimpeded by his hat - and more crucially, any view from the Manor of _them._

And then he parted his lips slowly, using the movement to guide her, and pushed his hand back and down to the nape of her neck, gently but insistently pulling her to him, and he kissed her deeply, as she brought up a dizzy hand which grasped his shirt collar and pulled…

_Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!_

The Spine broke away briefly to look towards the window, where the transmission had come from, and sure enough the lights had gone. He grinned at her.

_That's what you get for peepin’_ , he pinged back so Squeaks could hear.

_OK, OK, we get it. C’mon dude, in front of your **sister**? _

_Ain't nothing but kisses._

_Yeah, yeah. Get a room, you two._

He looked back at her, and she released her grip on his collar. She tried fervently to avoid steaming, but failed utterly when she realised that she'd pulled hard enough on his shirt that she'd undone at least two buttons and exposed a little of his chassis.

“I'm not all sure that was just to get rid of the spectators,” she said faintly, waving a hand vaguely to disperse the vapour around her head.

The Spine stroked the back of her neck. Squeaks worried that the sensation would cause her to emit sparks.

“I'm not going to say that it wasn't one of the more enjoyable ways of doing it,” he answered slyly. “Unless you disagree?”

“No. No, I don't think I do.”

The rising sun was, at this point, significantly forgotten.

The Spine’s fingers paused at the base of her neck, as if feeling for something, and his eyes flickered downward to look at his hand. He looked slightly puzzled.

“You're not wearing your goggles.”

The moment seemed to flicker, and Squeaks’ smile wavered, “no, I took them off.”

“You _never_ take them off.”

She shook her head. She'd distracted herself so successfully that she'd nearly managed to forget about them.

“While I was away they kind of… stopped working,” she tried to answer him offhand, but it was difficult not to let on how worried she was. She dropped her gaze, and tried to forget about it. She was pressed up against him now, and his unbuttoned shirt revealed that his silver chest was more sculpted than she'd realised…

“They stopped working? What went wrong?” his voice carved into her reverie.

“Who said they went wrong?” she snapped, “they just stopped. It could mean anything.” She wasn't used to hearing herself sound like that, and it surprised her. She squeezed her free hand into a fist in fear of saying of something else stupid.

“Hey,” he said, gently, “I know that face by now. You're worried.”

“I shouldn't be. Anything could've happened, I can't go jumping to conclusions.”

“Like what?”

She wanted to put her hand up to her neck, where the goggles should be. She wanted the comfort, but they weren't there. So instead, she squeezed her fist tighter, until it began to hurt.

“Like something being wrong with Rachel. I'm worried that something’s happened to her.” Her voice cracked, and her vision covered in rainbows as she welled up, but she blinked the tears away. _No. I'm not going to start crying again._

“Hey. Come here.” The Spine held her tight, and tried to look down into her face, but she couldn't look up. She'd tell him too much.

“That can't be it,” he murmured, “it's not just that they stopped, is it? What else happened?”

She shook her head, “Peter said the link’s probably just faded.”

“But you don't believe him?”

“Or maybe Rachel knew about the connection, and found a way to break it,” she carried on, without conviction.

“Also plausible. You're really working yourself up about this.”

She shook her head again, hard, like she could shake the thought out of it.

“Also… I had another one of those visions,” she muttered.

“Another one? You blacked out again? What happened this time?”

“It was the Necronaut, again. The world was burning, and he just pulled me to pieces. Eventually he pulled my core out.” She omitted the detail about the maddening, horrific pain, and what had caused the blackout in the first place.

“And then the Nothing memory triggered again?”

She nodded.

“I know you said you can’t tell me what’s going to happen,” she asked slowly, “if the Necronaut comes, but can you at least tell me if the Earth survives or not? These simulations I have are all what happens when we lose against him. And I’m scared I’m right.”

The Spine sighed sadly. “If I could, you know I would.”

She dropped her head onto his shoulder, and said nothing. Rachel had gone silent, and she still had these simulations reminding her that, someday, the end was coming, and it wouldn’t be quick and painless. She couldn’t understand why it worried her so much – it was perhaps two _centuries_ away. But it seemed so certain, so inevitable. And when the Necronaut was coming for the whole planet, where could they run to?

“Squeaks-”

“-forget about it. I - I'm probably worried over nothing.”

“Are you sure? You don't want to talk it over?”

“Really don't. Let's talk about something else, maybe? Something nice,” she pleaded.

She could sense The Spine trying to catch her eye for a few moments longer before he looked away.

“The sky's still real pretty,” he offered. She stroked the back of his hand and looked out over the sunrise. The blue sky was getting paler every moment. He wrapped his arm back around her, and gently toyed with the back of her dress.

Squeaks began to fight a rising need to be away from here. To be anywhere but the Manor.

“I've asked Peter to open a portal to Kazooland,” she mumbled.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That's a good idea. None of us have been there in a while.”

She nodded.

“I want to go there. See what it's like.”

“I think you'd really like it.”

She paused, and put a hand tentatively against his chest.

“Would you come with me?”

“We all would,” he said without hesitation, “it would make for a great holiday.”  
  
Squeaks cut her next words off short.

_No, I meant with you. Just you_. _Just to run away._

But either he had said what he believed she asked him for, or he had intentionally misconstrued her words to make a point. Either way, she knew better than to push it.  
  
“Great,” she said instead, “I’ll come get you all when Peter opens the portal.”  
  
“I hope he gets the location right,” said Spine earnestly, “Biscuit Town would be great. We’ll introduce you to The Jon.”  
  
“What’s he like?”  
  
The Spine paused, just fiddling with an errant thread on her dress, “Different. But I’m sure you’ll like him.”  
  
“I hope he likes me.”  
  
“Oh, he will. You’re-” The Spine stopped himself, and drummed his fingers against her back. “He’ll like you just fine,” he finished softly.  
  
Truth be told, Squeaks really didn’t want to go meeting more family bots out in a foreign world. She wanted to go and look for more people a bit like her, who had to be out there somewhere. Or perhaps people who were completely different. In any case, she wanted to explore a little, beyond the four walls of the Manor that she’d begun to know like the back of her hand.  
  
“Squeaks?”  
  
“Mm?” Squeaks had begun to drift into her own mind.  
  
“Why did you kiss me?”  
  
_Because I always wanted to._  
  
Because I was angry and confused and needed to find out what would happen.  
  
Because my world revolves around you, and maybe I hoped that if I did, I could get on with being with you so I can pursue my own interests.  
  
“Why did you let me?” she asked instead.  
  
And he nodded, the words answering questions neither of them wanted or needed to say right now. Maybe later, but not now.  
  
He kissed the top of her head gently, and they just sat and looked out into the sky.  
  
After a while, Squeaks’ mind wandered back to what really worried her, but it wasn’t something that she could say out loud. Because if she said it out loud, that made it real. And at the moment, she could pretend that it wasn’t real.  
  
Back at Becile Industries, she had been overcome with agony when her eyes were installed.  
  
She had heard herself scream.  
  
She had also heard the screech of brakes.

***

Peter had made an important discovery. Since he'd cordoned off the lift, he hadn't been interrupted _once._ He got through a lot more work when he was down there, and so he pottered on down that morning with a few vials, a spare screwdriver and Squeaks’ goggles, which she'd left in a lab and hadn't picked up since. So Peter reasoned he could take a look at them and see what was wrong.

He dumped the whole lot on the desk in the little side-room, and ignored the crackling objection of the filter in the corner. He'd become a lot more comfortable around it, now it had been around for a while but hadn't tried to kill him yet. He'd nearly given it a name, but nothing seemed to stick - not even Bob. So he grabbed the stack of chairs from the corner and piled them up in front of it, just in case he _did_ trip and fall into it.

Then he pulled a chair up to the desk, and got to work on the goggles. It took a long time to get into them because he'd built them with tampering in mind; once they were out of his care, the original plan had been that no-one should be able to get to the blue matter inside. He'd intended for no-one to know that it was there in the first place, which is why it was stored in a secret compartment behind the lenses.

The whole project had been tough, but fun. He'd had to pair slightly too much blue matter with Squeaks’ core, then split some out without it exploding, then create and seal a pair of goggles that were difficult to break into _but_ still operated sufficiently as virtual reality equipment. When it was done, he'd been very, very proud of himself.

And then Rachel said she didn't want them anyway, left them behind, and a new robot was born.

Or was a bit Rachel or something.

After about half an hour’s work, the compartment popped open with a satisfying click, and he held the base steady to take the lid away.

He expected to find inside a thick, self-collecting syrup that looked a little like glowing putty. Instead, the moment he opened the compartment, frothy blue tendrils began to flow out over the open edge and onto the table, and he snapped the lid down again before it all escaped.

He sat frozen and watched as the escaped blue matter fizzed across the table, evaporating slowly into nothingness.

Peter didn't have to open the goggles again to confirm what that meant, and he sat and fretted over it. The blue matter was no longer paired to anything - not Rachel, not Squeaks. Somehow, Peter didn't understand enough to know how, the blue matter had unpaired from them both.

He'd never found a way yet of combining blue matter with pre-paired matter, so he didn't know where to start combining with Squeaks again.

What he did know, with some certainty, was that there was no way of recombining with Rachel unless she handled the goggles again, and she was off limits. The only way to know where she was now was to get in contact with her, and maybe that wasn’t such a demonised thing anymore.

But it meant that Squeaks was, now, truly on her own.

Nervously, he considered the alternative. His gaze drifted over a cell phone he hadn't touched in weeks.

***

Squeaks woke the next day with an ache behind her eyes and a warning that her water levels were low, so she went down to the kitchen and got a fresh bottle of distilled water from under the kitchen sink. They kept it next to the bleach. A few months ago, she probably would've pointed out how stupid that was. Instead, she hardly noticed, and downed the bottle.

She checked her memory files again, like she had done every few hours, just in case something new arrived, but there was still silence. She'd been semiconscious all through the night, looking through all her extra memories for any kind of clue from Rachel as to what she was up to, but they only seemed to flow backwards. There was, as best as she could tell, nothing recent.

She found herself filing idly through Rachel’s memories of the robots. Some were overlaid with her own, very few were not. She flitted past one that she had shown The Spine, of Rabbit somersaulting onto his back from a giant speeding cat and grappling with him. At the time, it had made her laugh. Now, as she reviewed his head popping off, she wondered if it hurt. Another she did not remember; Rachel was sitting in a large leather chair, when The Spine barrelled in and carried her out of the room, away from the impact of a disastrous explosion. Curious, Squeaks allowed the memory to unfold, and guiltily let herself lay awash of the emotions Rachel left with her.

_…“You did just throw a stick of dynamite into the fire.” The Spine warned her with apprehension, and the next moments were almost lost in the white grip of fear that flooded Rachel’s mind. But the next Rachel knew, she was outside the room with the door slammed fast, and The Spine held her protectively as the door shuddered behind them under the power of the explosion._

_“Peter doesn’t believe in doors,” she said pathetically, and she had grasped for his collar. She looked up into piercing green eyes, and away again quickly, her cheeks burning. Rachel hoped The Spine hadn’t seen, that he couldn’t feel her rapid pulse through his gentle hold on her wrist – or didn’t know what it meant. But she let him carry her away to fetch another wheelchair, and let her arms wrap about him so she didn’t slip. She let her wrist fall against his neck, just to find out whether the metal was warm; it was a little warmer than her own, and sent a tantalising tingle that lifted the hairs all down her arm. She couldn’t quite isolate whether it was latent static, or the same thrum that was still making her a little light-headed. She swallowed hard, and tried to concentrate on breathing…_

The memory faded, leaving the pulsing of a heartbeat in Squeaks’ ears. It was a heartbeat she missed hearing. She stood still in the kitchen, staring blankly ahead holding the empty water bottle, as she processed the emotional waves in the memory. Rachel had been attracted to him, too. The dizziness in the memory was all too familiar.

When Squeaks tried to believe that she stood as herself alone, the pieces didn't fit. When she thought of herself as Rachel, trapped in this body, that didn't entirely fit, either. She had to be somewhere in the middle, but watching that memory made her feel cheapened. Was there nothing of her that wasn't a cheap knock-off of what Rachel already was? Had she really fallen for The Spine like she believed she had, or were those feelings just an imitation of Rachel's latent attraction?

Squeaks pursed her lips irritably. She had believed that The Spine, at least, was one of her own desires. Maybe, after all this, she only cared because Rachel cared.

But she was here _now_ , Squeaks tried to remind herself. She was here, and The Spine was here, and it was her that he wanted to spend time with.

Unless, said a nasty little voice that brought up the image of him holding up Rachel in his arms, he only spent time with her because she reminded him enough of Rachel.

She checked her memory files again, but there was nothing new. And then she threw the bottle into the recycling, and sought company.

Zero invited her to watch clouds with him, except there weren't any clouds over San Diego so they breathed steam into the air and watched that instead. They climbed up to the tallest room in the Manor together and he showed her how to climb up onto the roof, where they danced a macarena together.

Squeaks checked for a new memory, but there wasn't any.

Then Rabbit called them and Zero nearly fell off the roof, so they climbed back down and Rabbit took Squeaks out for a ride on Marshmallow down to the forest near the edge of the grounds, where apparently there were man-eating plants and huge matter-poisoned bears. They sat in the sun and Rabbit ate a moonpie.

They went back inside and bumped into Peter, who was once again emerging from the lift and looked at Squeaks guiltily before slipping away to the kitchen.

“He's down there a lot,” she mused aloud to his retreating back.

“I wonder what he's up to.” Rabbit’s head had started ticking mildly, and little chocolate shavings were falling out of the gaps in her wiring.

“Me too…”

It seemed to her that Peter was acting strangely, or at least outside of his normal parameters of strangeness. He was up to something down there, and once again she began to feel curiosity take hold of her.

But not before a silver hand crept onto her shoulder.

“Hey,” said The Spine.

Rabbit let out a long groan, and slumped.

“Okaaaaaaay I'm goin’,” she moaned, and began to stomp moodily away.

“All he said was hi,” said Squeaks, but she was already smiling.

“Yeah, but you'll wanna _kiss_ and _cuddle_ and then he'll do something _gross_ and uuuuuuggggghhhhhh,” and she continued groaning loudly as she dragged her feet all the way up the stairs and, eventually, out of earshot. Squeaks glanced up at The Spine, who was still watching Rabbit go.

“It's not the worst idea in the world,” she hinted.

“It's not, by any means,” he smiled, a glimmer in his eyes, “But I was thinking of taking a walk, if you wanted to come with.”

“That would be nice, too. What kind of a walk?”

“Well we've not walked together beyond the hill. How about we take a stroll around the mountain?”

They headed outside again, and down the long drive out the front. The last time Squeaks had been out here alone it had been getting dark, and she hadn't spotted the scars in the road where Zero had dug it up via boat. She remembered Hatchworth dragging the boat away, and thought fondly of him. She missed having him around.

The path to the left spiralled downward towards the city, and as the tarmac gave way to dust and sand Squeaks spotted her own dusty tracks headed down that way, but The Spine offered her his hand and guided her up the mountain path to the right.

“Y’know,” he said casually, “the other day, when I couldn't find you, I ran into Rabbit and Zero in the rehearsal room.”

“Did you, indeed.”

The Spine watched her steadily as they walked, but she carefully and nonchalantly looked the other way, until he squeezed her hand and laughed.

“Some hide and seek champion you are. That curtain hung about a foot off the floor, your wheels were sticking out.”

She took the liberty of quietly knocking his hat off.

It was a lovely walk. They talked, and held hands, and occasionally he would catch her when a stone gave way and knocked her off balance. Eventually the sun began to set, and so they headed back. But all the while The Spine seemed a little preoccupied. Several times he looked as though he were about to speak, but frowned out over the view instead.

They got to the gates of the Manor when it happened again, and this time The Spine slowed to a halt, but looked anywhere rather than at her. The moment passed, and he went as if to walk again, but Squeaks stood fast and held his hand, even though she nearly fell over.

“You OK?”

“I'm having a very nice time.”

“Me too,” she said with a smile, “but that's not what I asked. What's up?”

“I…” he rubbed a hand against the back of his neck, and Squeaks waited. She swung their joined hands for good measure.

“I want… I want to qualify _this._ ” He gestured between them with his free hand, but looked away quickly, “I want to know what this is. Is this hand-holding and kisses, or is this… physical, or ‘dating’, or…” he finally looked up, and there was hope in his eyes, “were you hoping for something more?”

He looked so confused, but waited on her answer like it was gospel. _Oh,_ she thought, _my dear, sweet robot. Sometimes I forget._

She got the impression from him and Rabbit that they both considered amorous relationships like an on/off switch. There was friendship, there was passionate love like they read about in books, and nothing in between. But the bit in between was one of the best parts; the journey along the way.

“It's more difficult to qualify than you might think,” she said slowly.

“It is?” His shoulders began to slump.

“Well, it's mutual, for one thing. You can't expect me to tell you, we have to…” she shrugged, “work that out together.”

“Then help me work it out,” he pleaded, “What do _you_ think this is?”

She looked over the view to think. What _did_ she think? She thought it was a dream come true. A happy ending - or a happy beginning, at least. But one that she couldn’t help but feel she had borrowed from someone else. She wanted more, much more. She wanted to take the time to know him better, to know why she wanted him, and why he wanted her. She wanted to sit out on the hillside with him for hours and learn more about who he’d had the time to be over his very long life, and talk about who she might become over hers. She wanted to know that the light-headedness she felt when he smiled at her was _hers_ , and no-one else’s. She wanted plenty of time to hold him and romance him, and feel the sparks flying over her skin when he touched her. And she didn’t want to jeopardise any of that by racing too quickly through it all.

“I think it’s dangerous to put a name on something when you don’t know what it is. I think I want to find out what this is. With you.”

As she spoke, she got closer to him until their bodies were touching, and began to twist her hands up behind his back. His face relaxed a touch, but he looked a little disappointed. Nonetheless, his hands rested on her hips as she came close.

“Were you thinking something different?” she asked, her head on one side.

“I suppose not. I like this. I’d like it to continue.”

He bent down to kiss her, and she lifted a hand and curled it around the back of his neck.

“Me too,” she murmured. He said nothing for a moment, his eyes darting between hers, trying to read her. The vortexes in his eyes danced almost lazily with the movement.

“I care about you, Squeaks,” he whispered quickly, like he needed to let the words out before he could take them back. She held him close and pulled him down to her in a long, laboured kiss to disguise the fact that his words made her dizzy. But still, she struggled to know what to tell him in return.

“Me too,” she said simply.

He looked visibly relieved, and kissed her again, harder, so she almost winced with the pain, but it was a sweet, begging kiss.

They began moving with more purpose, more urgency, before he broke away and his head rocked to the side, rubbing the back of his neck.

He looked wholly embarrassed. “You are _really_ short. My neck’s getting sore.”

“We could go back inside?”

He glanced over to where the gate became a wall which was nearly as tall as Squeaks was, and scooped her up in a cradle-hold to carry her to the wall, where he sat her down and she could look him in the eye.

“Better?” he asked.

She responded by pulling on his shoulders to pull him closer again. Their lips were pressed together, slowly becoming more and more desperate, hungrier. Squeaks began to run her hand over The Spine’s back, over the curve that stooped inward from broad shoulders down to his waist, and she would’ve been able to explore better if it weren’t for those damn spines… She ran a thumb along the flat side of one at the small of his back when she found it in her way, and he uttered a guttural moan in response that made her issue a gust of steam in surprise, and she pulled away to look into his face.

“Sorry,” he growled, “bit of a sweet spot.”

And his mouth was back on hers before she could respond, and there was steam gently fluttering from between his shoulderblades. So she kissed him fervently, and her hands landed on his collar again and pulled, and accidentally pulled the buttons open again. It may not have been altogether _that_ accidental, but neither of them cared.

One of his hands had crept up her back, and the other was steadying him against the wall as he moved away from her lips to the side of her neck, and then paused, his lips gently issuing steam over the exposed cabling.

“May I?” he whispered in her ear.

She nodded faintly, glad his arm was steady at her back to stop her falling backwards off the wall. And then he was slowly, gently kissing her neck, from the base of her ear down to where the cabling met her chassis, and she almost shivered with pleasure. His lips stroked their way down over the top of her chest, where for some reason the metal, shaped in the imitation of a collarbone, was somewhat sensitive, and he stopped to look up as she gasped slightly at the sensation and leaned back onto his arm.

“Do you like that?” he asked huskily, his hand pressing her body into his.

She responded with a wordless moan, and he groaned back and left a trail of kisses further down over her chassis before working his way back up to her lips, and _somehow_ his shirt was more unbuttoned now and he was pressed hard against her, his chest one warm, hard sheet of hammered steel. She thought perhaps she saw the blue glimmer of a core, but her eyes fluttered closed, and she was sure no-one could see them for the cloud of steam billowing all around them now and-

_Squeaks?! Squeaks where are ya, Peter’s lookin’ for ya!_

Rabbit’s voice stabbed into her head like a knife, but she ignored it. The Spine was trying to subtly work out if her dress had a zip.

_The Spine?! Have you seen Squeaks? Are you still kanoodlin’?_

The voice lasered into both their heads and The Spine audibly growled as he tried to dismiss it.

_‘Spine?!_

_Shove off_ , he pinged back simply.

_But Peter wants to see her,_ the voice came back pleading, _he’s gonna call Rachel._

They both froze.

_Now?_ The Spine threw back, as they opened their eyes and stared at one another.

_Think so._

“He can wait,” Squeaks begged, but quickly lost her conviction. The voice was like a bucket of ice-water. “Damnit. _Now?_ I’ve been asking for months and he says _now?_ It’s like five in the morning in England.”

The Spine watched her carefully, and if she hadn’t known any better she would say he was breathing heavily. He looked pained, but a decision was cementing in his mind, even if it wasn’t the one he’d prefer.

“Can we do this again?” He pleaded, his arms relaxing around her. He ran a hand tantalisingly down her forearm.

“We can keep doing this _now_ ,” she begged, “Rachel can wait.”

“No, she can’t. You’ve always wanted to talk to her, and we both know Peter might change his mind again by the morning. We need to go now.” He kissed her, very gently, “Just promise me we’ll come back to this.”

She huffed, but let him lift her down from the wall and lead her back to the Manor as he rebuttoned his shirt and retipped his hat. She looked over the hill as they walked to catch any city lights, most of which were too low over the edge to be seen from here, apart from an errant car that was halfway up the mountain, its headlights catching on the mountainside now that it was dark.

Peter met them in the entrance hall, walking towards them from the shadows of the lift. There was none of his usual bounce. He looked between them nervously, and he was cradling a phone that Squeaks hadn't seen before.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered.

Assuming he was apologising for interrupting, Squeaks checked her dress wasn't obviously askew with a shrug.

“This is shitty timing,” she said honestly, “why now? It's barely light in England, I can't imagine she'll pick up the phone.”

Peter’s fingers went white around the phone, and he looked up at The Spine.

“Can I have a moment alone with Squeaks?”

The look on Spine’s face suggested that he'd really rather ask Peter the same thing, but he wordlessly backed away. Peter mumbled something, and called the lift.

“Why are we going down there? I can't imagine the signal’s any good.” When he didn’t answer, quietly ushering her into the lift, Squeaks travelled down with him anyway. She began to feel that something wasn't right.

Peter stepped out of the lift into the light of Delilah’s balcony, and away from the body of the Manor he began to talk. “I already called.” He was still holding onto his phone like a security blanket.

“Why?”

He shrugged, “it doesn't matter.” And then he went quiet again.

“Was she angry?” Squeaks prompted anxiously.

“No. Oh hell… Squeaks, I don't know how to put this.”

Then she knew what he needed to say, and everything stopped.

“Then don’t say it,” she whispered urgently, “you don’t have to say it.”

He spoke anyway, and the words hung in the air, grey, cold and a reality she couldn't ignore.

“There's an answering message on Rachel's phone. She… there was an accident. She's gone.”

*****


	26. Never had a chance at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Squeaks has discovered some of her previous actions may have had terrible implications, and does not take this well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to lie... despite the fact that this is where the story goes, and I've tried to get here very carefully, I'm still not sure this reads well. Let me see if there's any triggers I should warn you about... a bit of robo-damage, maybe, and restraint.
> 
> Oh uh - remember that chapter a while back, when Squeaks found out the Vice Quadrant was real, and Rabbit told her that some people would do anything to have the power to control the Necronaut? Just bear that in mind, perhaps.
> 
> As ever, everyone, thank you for coming with me this far! Something tells me you'll either love this or hate it...  
> 21/04/2018  
> TLL

It had happened three days ago, Peter explained. Rachel had lost control of her bicycle on the road, and fallen into the path of oncoming traffic. She had died at the scene.

Squeaks said nothing. She didn't even cry. The words just played over and over in her head as she stared into the distance. She walked aimlessly towards the room at the end of the balcony, but Peter blocked her path, and led her back to the lift.

Rachel was dead.

She had already known. But she'd prayed she was wrong. She had drowned out the noise and ignored it. Maybe she could've helped, if she'd said something earlier. Now, it was far, far too late.

Rachel was dead.

Peter tried to talk to her, as he led her back into the entrance hall, but his voice didn't really reach her. Everything had gone very quiet, except for a sound that got louder and angrier as she replayed it over, and over, a sound she’d heard at Becile Industries.

A scream.

The screech of brakes.

A ringing in her ears, that stopped too fast, too soon. No wonder the goggles had gone silent. There was no-one there to connect to.

“Go away,” she managed hoarsely.

Peter said something back to her, but she couldn't hear it over the sound of screaming.

“Go _away_ ,” she said again, louder. The effort made her dizzy.

He looked at her for a moment, and then disappeared up the stairs. He was probably worried about her, but that didn't really register in her mind.

She turned back towards the lift, and just managed to focus on the little button on the wall. Someone pressed it, and it took a moment to notice that the hand was hers. And then, because Peter had locked the lift down, nothing happened.

She slammed her fist against the button again, hard enough that one of her fingers bent against the frame painfully. She didn't care. Nothing happened again.

Through the noise of Rachel screaming in her mind, there was a clear thought forming. It was angry, and scared, and dark, but it started pounding through her like a bell.

She needed out. She had stolen the memories of a woman she never met, and now that woman was dead. She was stuck here with a man with no face and a lover with a human complex, on a planet that would end when a big green alien came to call. She asked for escape from Peter, and ever since he had been down there in the basement, locking her out, always afraid to see her, throwing her guilty looks when he did appear.

She needed out, and out was down there.

There was a tiny voice telling her she was overreacting, but it was drowned out by screaming.

She jammed her fingers into the lift doors and forced them open, and the metal moulded like clay under her grip. But the pain radiated up her arms until they were on fire. Beyond in the lift shaft hung an oily cable, and she thrust her arm out to grab it as the doors clamped hard onto her chest. She felt her chassis give way to the impact with a noise like a can being crushed, and the pain was sharp and burning. Sensors beeped, complaining of crumple-zones collapsing, which she ignored.

Squeaks screwed up her face and wrenched the door open again, and her weight dragged her down and out into the shaft where she clung to the cable as the door slammed shut again. Then hand over hand, she climbed down the cable to the level far below. She was vaguely aware of the cable groaning under her weight, but the noise was distant to her.

The instant she'd asked to get out, Peter had sealed this place off. She had asked for legs, but that would've helped her travel. Because, she thought with growing certainty, Peter had known there was a way out down here all along, and was never going to tell her.

She was too useful to him as a guinea pig. He would never just let her run off to Kazooland. The portal was always here. She had to escape.

She couldn't get the screaming to stop.

She reached the bottom door and dragged it open to let herself out when the sound of grinding metal above made her look up.

There was a shaft of light, and someone called her name. She ignored it.

Out into the light again, she hurried out along the balcony, past the damn giant giraffe to the little room at the other end.

She rounded into the room as she heard the lift doors slam shut again, heavy, fast footfalls bounding off the hanging balcony towards her.

It was a small room. A mahogany desk. Half-finished silver legs. Rachel's goggles - _her_ goggles - burst open on the table, dead and empty. A stack of chairs, pushed up against something near the opposite wall.

She darted for the chairs and threw them behind her, vaguely aware of a searing pain as she snapped cables in her wrist.

There it was.

She had never seen a portal before, but surely this was it. Hanging like a hole in space, grey, empty, beckoning. The portal to Kazooland that Peter had here all along, and kept secret from her so he could keep her here.

She heard a chair being kicked away behind her and lunged for the portal, for desperate freedom.

Arms grabbed her around the waist and dragged her down to the floor, even as she reached out towards the portal.

Pinned to the floor, she tried in vain to push off her assailant, but he was too strong and too heavy, and so she screamed and snarled and fought like a cornered animal, trying to push her hands up to claw his face, because he was The Spine and she knew it would _hurt._ Her mind was white with blind fury, and he was holding her back from her way to freedom. And she was a _robot_ now, and she would never tire of fighting until he let her go.

 _Squeaks, will you calm down?!_ He yelled into her head, but she screwed her eyes shut and drowned him out, and began calculating furiously how to get out and get to the portal before him.

Waiting for one of them to tire: useless.

Grabbing one of the chairs, and hitting him with it: useless.

Feign malfunction: he would carry her away.

Every strategy fell to pieces, and she was left with only giving up. She went limp. Somewhere, far away, the lift bell went. That meant Peter had followed The Spine down. He knew she was down here trying to escape, and she had lost. They wouldn’t let her leave, now. She would have to admit the reality of the world that trapped her.

The Spine didn't relinquish his hold on her. He was on his knees on top of her and had pinned both her arms to the ground.

“What was all that?” he asked with horror.

She lay there uselessly as footsteps followed down the balcony.

“Rachel is dead.” Her head lolled to the side, and she spoke without feeling to the empty air. “The pain went back the wrong way. I killed her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, now this is compromising,” came a voice from the doorway. It was a distinctly female voice, cool and faintly amused. “I mean I knew you fancied him, but I didn't think you'd get under him so quickly.”

The Spine’s head snapped up, and he dragged Squeaks upright quickly to stare at the door. She took her chance and lunged for the portal again, but he grabbed her by the elbows and didn't let go.

“Stop moving so fast,” the woman spoke again, “or this conversation will be short.”

Squeaks looked up to see a weapon aimed at her head, and the woman holding it was leaning against the doorframe.

“What are you doing here?” The Spine growled at her.

“You have _no doors,_ Spine. It's not exactly hard to get into this place.”

“Phyllisia?” Squeaks squinted at her as the real world began to swim back into view.

Phyllisia smiled at Squeaks, “Hey, Squeaks. Sorry you're getting all mixed up in this.”

“You _know_ her?” The Spine looked down at her, distraught.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“She’s Phyllisia _Becile_.”

“So you’re business rivals. So what?”

He looked towards the door and back again in disbelief. “What have you been telling her?” he spat at Phyllisia.

“More than you, apparently. And stop using the girl as a shield, it won’t work.”

“Bullets don’t work against robots,” The Spine said, without letting go of Squeaks.

“Like I don’t know that. Squeaks, care to explain to him what this is?” She flicked the gun in her hand to shoo The Spine away from Squeaks.

The Spine reluctantly let Squeaks go and stepped away, and Phyllisia trained the familiar weapon on his chest.

“It’s a light gun,” Squeaks said briefly as she recognised it from the bench in Becile Industries, her head swimming in the confusion, “submits the target to rapid acceleration. If it works, it’s extremely lethal.”

“Oh, it works,” Phyllisia explained with a smile, “thanks to you. Beam splits into a cone around the opposite axis. Makes a temporary shield and stops the kick-back. Works like a dream.”

The Spine looked between the two of them in horrified confusion, as Squeaks eyes darted back to the portal. Perhaps she would still be able to get out of this place.

 _Keep away from that thing,_ he pinged as he saw her move towards it, _I don’t know what it is, but it’ll melt you if you touch it._

_It’s not a portal?_

_Is that what this was about? No, it’s really not._

Squeaks felt hope slip out of her fingers and the sound of screaming began to die away, leaving the tense silence of being stood at the end of the barrel of a gun.

“Anyway,” Phyllisia continued, “You're coming with me, Spine.”

He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, ma’am, I'm not.”

“Oh, but you are. Because if you _don't_ come with me,” she turned the gun on Squeaks, “well. You understand. Sorry, Squeaks. Nothing personal.”

“You’re threatening to shoot a Walter Robot?” The Spine sneered.

“I’m threatening to shoot the woman you love,” Phyllisia said smoothly, almost sympathetically, and then she looked over both her captives, gauging their reactions. “Oh, did that bit not come up yet? You both looked pretty into it earlier.”

Squeaks thought back. Sitting on the wall outside the Manor – there had been a car driving up the mountain in the dark. Phyllisia had been watching them.

The Spine stepped towards Phyllisia, just far enough that she pushed the gun in his direction and away from Squeaks.

“Is anyone going to explain to me how you two know one another?” he asked sourly.

Phyllisia sighed irritably.

“Fine. You two have been keeping secrets from one another, and I guess now it’s my job to straighten them out. Spine, Squeaks came to me a few days ago to get some green eyes installed. Squeaks, Spine is a murderer. Any other questions?”

Squeaks and The Spine stared at each other.

“You’re not a murderer,” Squeaks said thickly.

“She’s lying,” he cut in, but his eyes darted between hers, “but… oh hell, what have you _done_.”

“She’s been very useful,” Phyllisia cut in, shifting her weight against the door. “Noticed Squeaks behaving differently, recently? Enjoying vibrant colours more? Looking away if you hit her too hard? Mood-swings, irritable behaviour? An interesting list of side-effects. I didn’t even know about the pain thing. Squeaks passed on that little tid-bit. She’s been very informative, on the whole. Because _you_ managed to keep that from us for years, didn’t you, Spine?

“I set up a little advert a while ago to get myself some informants and _guess who came knocking on the door_. A wonderfully naïve creature, who not only lives at Walter Manor but has no other external ties, has fallen head over heels in love with you and has somehow never heard the name ‘Becile’.”

The slight advantage of wireless conversation was that it could occur significantly faster than a human could register. As Phyllisia continued talking, The Spine pinged Squeaks again.

_You don’t know who the Beciles are?_

_No. Should I?_

_They’re the reason we exist._ He sent across a file of all their involvement with the Walter family; an old friendship, torn to shreds over a girl. The fight of blue matter against green. A horrendous, bloody fight against copper elephants. The poor love interest, brought back to life against her will. Rabbit kidnapped and tortured, eventually exploding and killing off a branch of the family. A century of repeated, aggravated attempts on the Walter’s lives. A family of dark, dangerous men and women whose only means of supporting one another was to trample each other underfoot to climb to the top of the heap, and who would try anything they could to bring Walter Robotics to its knees, without getting arrested.

“So she came to me,” Phyllisia continued, “and I gave her what she wanted. Now I’ve been in her head, Spine. You’d love to see some of the stuff I found in there.”

“She hasn’t,” said Squeaks, doubtfully, “she just gave me the eyes and I left.”

“Are you sure about that?” Phyllisia put her head on one side, “How long were you out of action, Squeaks? About an hour? I’m a very good hacker. I told you that.”

Squeaks’ eyes widened. Had she been searching through her memories? She surely didn’t know anything of value to the Beciles – but she had an internal map of the Walter Manor now, built up over the months she’d been trying not to get lost. A map that would be very useful to someone who wanted to know the inner workings of the building.

“You don't have green eyes,” said The Spine, slowly.

“She's been very good. I told her not to tell you, so she didn't.” The gun was back on Squeaks, “I think the experiment’s over. You can show him what you look like, if you want.”

With her gentle smile it sounded like an invitation, but at the end of the barrel of the light gun it became a threat. Squeaks glanced at The Spine, and lifted her hands to her face.

“Careful. No fast movements.”

Slowly, she hooked her fingers underneath the edge of the caps of each eyecap, and popped them off. She had to lean forward a little to let them fall out. Without the blue fringe around her pupils, the world became instantly wider, and she looked up at The Spine, green eyes meeting green for the first time. He wasn't excited, or happy to see them. A wave of brief disgust passed over his eyes, but then he just looked broken.

“Why did you do this?” he asked, heavily.

“It was going to be a surprise,” her eyes began to fill with tears, “I thought you'd like them. Spine, I didn't know.”

“Then Rachel…”

“It was my fault.” The words started tumbling out of her mouth, and her voice crackled as the tears spilled over her cheeks, “I got the eyes and all I could feel was pain. It channelled backwards through me and into her and she couldn’t control her bike… I killed her, Spine. Oh, god, I've killed her…”

She buckled over in distress, and the screaming started playing over in her head again. She pulled up slowly, trying to force her fingers into her rubber ears, which made no difference as the noise was inside her head. And only now she noticed that her left hand swung uselessly from the wrist, and when she tried to lift it to her head the movement was accompanied by a shock of white pain that made her wince. The Spine grimaced as he saw her react to the pain.

“I could've told you,” he said gravely, “if you'd asked, I could have told you what those things do to you.”

“Oh dear,” Phyllisia cut in, with a click of the tongue that implied that this wasn’t an avenue of conversation she cared about pursuing. “But you see I have control over her. So you come with me, Spine.”

Squeaks eyes snapped up, but she could hardly see Phyllisia through the rainbow of tears, “what do you even want him for?”

“I told you. He's dangerous, and I intend to use him to prove it.”

“I’m not dangerous,” said The Spine, guardedly. But he took another half-step towards Phyllisia that swung the light gun away from Squeaks and back to him, and Squeaks realised he wouldn’t let Phyllisia keep her in danger like that.

“Vietnam,” said Phyllisia bluntly, and then she watched for a response. But The Spine’s face was stony. She sighed. “Would you like me to clarify?”

When he continued to say nothing, Phyllisia turned to look at Squeaks, though the light gun stayed squarely on The Spine’s chest. “You remember I got kicked out of the army for hacking? Guess whose war record I was looking up.”  She addressed The Spine again, casually. “Have you ever told her about what happened at the compound?”

The Spine seemed rooted to the spot. His usual gentle swaying had stopped, and he was blankly staring at Phyllisia in a way that made Squeaks uneasy.

“The robots were captured. And then rescued,” Squeaks said, when The Spine offered nothing. He managed a small shake of his head, like she shouldn’t have spoken.

“Rescued. Indeed.” Phyllisia smiled at Squeaks, kindly. “No-one survived the onslaught, and the silver soldier carried his brothers out on a trolley, alone. How _fabulously_ tragic. How many people were there in the compound, Spine?” Phyllisia addressed The Spine again, and now her shoulders had begun to square up. “How many armed soldiers were assigned to the rescue mission? Hmm?”

Silence pressed in as The Spine continued to offer no response, and Squeaks wished he would speak. His silence suggested maybe there was something he was being careful not to say. So Phyllisia filled in the silence for him.

“It worked out at about ten, heavily armed soldiers for every man on the compound. How do you suppose the compound held its own, so massively outnumbered? Was there a bomb? Or were the soldiers just a really poor shot?”

Her eyes settled on The Spine’s, and now she began to glare intently at him, forcing the words through her lips furiously, “It doesn't make any sense, until you account for the supersoldier who's impervious to bullets. A little suspicious, don't you think?”

The Spine still wasn’t moving, matching her gaze solidly. Squeaks sent a message into his head, and he visibly flinched.

_Is she suggesting what I think she is?_

“ _You_ killed them.” Phyllisia spoke slowly and deliberately, making sure both robots in her capture heard and comprehended every word she spoke. “The soldiers took the compound peacefully. They found you. And then you slaughtered them.”

The Spine stood like a statue, but steam was beginning to curl out from his back. Squeaks tried to catch his eye, but he was locked eye-to-eye with Phyllisia. It was a ludicrous story. The Spine couldn’t hurt a fly if it flew under his hand. Rabbit had told Squeaks herself, The Spine had rescued her in the compound…

But no-one was left alive. Even in an all-out firefight that sounded strange, now she thought about it.

 _She is lying, isn’t she?_ She found herself begging, more than asking.

_I don't know._

_What do you mean, you don't **know**? You told me everyone was already dead when you woke up!_

_Because I had to! No-one was ever supposed to know about this!_

Squeaks balked at him. She remembered sitting in a nest of wires, holding his hand, as he told her that the whole compound was dead when he had awoken. Had he been lying to her?

_But how can you not know? What did you do?!_

_I told you, I was disconnected for five years. Whoever woke me up again… the damn eyes were already connected. I just remember pain. White hot pain, for a very long time. By the time I came to my senses… I was covered in blood. And there were bodies everywhere._

Squeaks felt sick. She'd felt that pain, and it had rendered her completely incapable. In that time, a woman had died. Her mind began conjuring up images all by itself, of The Spine raging through an army of fleeing men, blindly ripping them apart as they screamed.

 _You killed them_ , she said in disbelief.

She watched him, wanting it to be a mistake. A lie, a cover-up. But he had woken up, barely aware of who he even was anymore, to a new sensation he couldn't possibly have begun to understand.

_I don’t know. There’s no way I can find out. Sometimes I think it was me, but I’d lost all sense of who or where I was. Sometimes I think someone was controlling me. Sometimes I think they framed me, so someone like this asshole can try to take me away._

_Who's ‘they’? How could there have been green matter all the way out there?_

The Spine minutely shrugged.

 _But then they might have been controlling you through the green matter,_ Squeaks thought aloud, _What if it's too dangerous? Why not replace them?_

He caught her eye, and looked back at Phyllisia, disgusted to see his own eyes reflected in her face. _I've thought about it. And then sometimes, keeping them feels like all the punishment I deserve._

How could there have been green matter? Why should Phyllisia care? Squeaks rounded back on Phyllisia.

“I was listening to you, you know. You told me your grandfather died in Vietnam. He was _there_ , wasn't he? He was in the compound.”

Phyllisia’s lips thinned. “You don't know that.”

“But he could've been, couldn't he? How do we know _he_ wasn't controlling The Spine?”

“You can't make me believe that,” Phyllisia growled, “he died there. Why would he get his own soldier to kill him?”

“Then why take him away? If you believe Spine did it, why haven't you just reported it?”

“Squeaks, he’s dangerous, and that means you all are. But I need him alive to prove it.” The difference between the way Phyllisia addressed them both was tangible. With Squeaks, she was almost conversational. Squeaks was only in her way – a pawn she was using to get to The Spine. Her detestation of The Spine burned through her eyes.

“He murdered a whole compound of people in one move, and I might have been the first person to work it out in 40 years. And he stands for the rest of his kind. I can get the records from his memory files, and present my case to the public. _All_ your robots will be shut down, Spine. I’m doing this to protect everyone from you.”

The Spine broke his gaze from Phyllisia's, and turned his head away. In the dim light, the scars around his eyes made him look old, and exhausted.

_You have to understand, I can’t ever find out what really happened that day. This isn’t just about me. This is everyone I love. If I tried to find out, and they find there’s something wrong with me, they’d go after all the others. I can’t… I can’t let them shut us down. You know that. I can’t go back there._

He spent five years alone in the blackness. He held on to his horrific secret in fear of ever being there again.

 _How many were there?_ Squeaks asked. She had no idea how big the compound had been.

_How many people?_

_Yes,_ she pressed, _How many._

He shook his head, small enough to be imperceptible to Phyllisia.

_I don't know. I had to carry Rabbit and The Jon past the bodies, but that was only one corridor. There were many more. I could barely remember who I was, never mind how to count._

“If you didn’t do it, come with me and prove it. If your memory files prove you’re innocent, I’ll let you go,” Phyllisia suggested.

The Spine lifted his head, then, and curled his lip back at Phyllisia in a snarl, and Squeaks saw a face of fury she’d not seen before.

“I’m not stupid, Becile,” he spat her name back at her. “Like hell you’d let me go. We both know you just want to dig around in my head to find out what you need to climb the Becile ladder. No-one’s come for me in 40 years after Vietnam. We fight the Necronaut and _then_ you come looking for me? You don't give a damn what happened to anyone at the compound. You just think you can blackmail me to get yourself into power.”

Phyllisia’s hands tensed around the gun, but she held it steady. “No. You’re a timebomb. A threat to everyone you know and love. Squeaks, help me out here. If I leave him here it’s only a matter of time before he does something to hurt you.”

“Then kill me,” The Spine snarled, putting out his arms.

“If I could, I would’ve shot you on sight. But without you I have no case, and the others go free. Maybe you’ve forgotten this?” and Phyllisia moved the gun back to Squeaks’ head.

“Leave her alone,” The Spine hissed. He instantly shifted his weight forward again, his movement pulling the gun’s aim from Squeaks and back towards him.

Squeaks wasn't sure what to believe, but in her panic she thought fast. Was he really capable of murder? What if he had never been in control in the first place; she wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.

He didn’t deny what had happened, but insisted he didn’t remember. What if he was lying? What if Phyllisia was right, and he _was_ dangerous? If the memory files existed, Phyllisia would be able to prove what happened, and perhaps that was necessary. Phyllisia seemed to believe it was true, which almost justified holding them hostage here.

Then again, perhaps Phyllisia was lying. What if she’d found just enough to construct the story she needed? What if the Beciles _had_ planted all of this, and were reaping their reward? They could take The Spine away, plant the memories in his head, and then Squeaks would know she was responsible as, one by one, she and all the robots were shut down and sent back into the darkness.

But even if Phyllisia was telling the truth, now Squeaks was a part of this, as well. Did that make her responsible for protecting the robots, or the humans?

If she sided with The Spine, what could they even do? Phyllisia was barring the only door with a gun. Squeaks began running scenarios in her head, but with no successful outcome. They were far enough away from her that she could shoot before they were anywhere near her. Even if they passed her they couldn't work the lift to get out. The blasted VOP code in Squeaks’ head stopped her from harming humans, and so she couldn't touch Phyllisia unless it was without the intent of hurting her, and it must have been the same for The Spine. Behind Squeaks was what had been her bid for freedom, which had almost killed her.

Before she had decided who she believed, The Spine sent a message into her head and disrupted her calculations.

_I’ve been modelling an attack plan. This is the only one that seems to work._

He sent her a file, and she opened it without question, but it was far from an attack plan. Visions began to overlap her own, flickering fast, much faster than a human could have processed. It only lasted for a moment but…

_The Spine turned as a little but beautiful new robot entered the Hall of Wires, and nearly tripped over herself as she saw him. He had been defending himself against her for so long, still furious that Peter had brought her here, but he let it go, and smiled, and she gazed back at him in confusion…_

_The Spine was sat on a stage, practicing guitar, and the most wonderful silhouette appeared in the doorway…_

_He was curled up on a starlit hill, and Squeaks was crying in his arms and he never wanted to let her go again…_

Memories, Squeaks recognised in horror. His memories of them together. He was sharing his own memories. That was something robots never did.

_…She burst through the door and grabbed him by the tie and kissed him, and all he wanted in that moment was to hold her, but now there were so many questions…_

Just as quickly the memories turned into dreams and desperate, hopeful fantasy for everything he wished might have happened instead.

_They sat on the starry hillside, and she had stopped crying because he pressed his lips against hers…_

_They stood on a balcony together, somewhere Squeaks didn’t recognise, by a sandy beach, just holding hands…_

_They were in Kazooland, and he was watching Squeaks laugh as The Jon balanced a bowling ball on his nose…_

_He hid behind the door of the HOW as he heard her coming and locked it behind her, pressing her to the wall with his body and urgent kisses…_

One last fantasy lingered on her mind as long as it dared.

_They sat on the hillside facing the Manor, watching a long-passed sunrise, and Squeaks was resting her head against his chest._

_“Squeaks?” he had asked tentatively._

_“Mm?” came her voice, buzzing against his chassis._

_“Why did you kiss me?”_

_She knew what she said next, but instead the Squeaks he kept in his mind looked up at him with shining, hopeful blue eyes and a gentle smile curling her lips._

_“Because I love you,” she said._

The memories faded to leave the barrel of a gun and his dark green eyes.

 _Why are you showing me this?_ She pinged to him, fearfully.

 _Because if she gets this angle wrong,_ he said, _I will die. And I wanted you to have that._

_Don’t be-_

He interrupted again, and this time it was an attack plan. The only plan, perfectly calculated. He would run in, and with Phyllisia’s reaction times (which he had gauged by carefully moving closer to guide the gun back towards him) she had time to make one shot. If the angle was right, she would vaporise his legs, and Squeaks had to get the gun out of her hand so they could push her face-first to the wall and neutralise the situation. Then, they could take her upstairs and talk, on a more even footing.

But there was an allowance for risk, and one variant. Phyllisia would either shoot him in the leg, or in the head. The probability was approximately equal.

 _You can’t. She'll_ _kill you!_ Squeaks begged. Phyllisia was slowly looking up in irritation at their silence. Three seconds had passed in silence between them, long enough for the human to register she wasn’t part of an ongoing conversation, but too short for the tears of fear in Squeaks eyes to begin falling from her eyes.

The Spine didn’t answer, but held her gaze. Just in case it was the last chance, he played the fantasy again, and Squeaks heard her own voice tell her the words she kept putting off saying.

_“Because I love you...”_

The instant that followed was too fast. Squeaks’ automatic calculations had continued behind her eyes, verifying The Spine’s conclusions, and came back to her, sounding a brief warning. The Spine had calculated one successful course of action, where Squeaks had calculated none, and that was only because Squeaks had just enough of Rachel’s mind – a human mind – which lingered somewhere in her own. The one thing that The Spine couldn’t possibly account for was the fallibility of human thought, of fury and boredom.

Phyllisia’s plan had already changed before he began to execute his. Squeaks didn't have the time to warn him – the message wouldn’t be fast enough.  
  
Phyllisia fired.

*****


	27. The Silver Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we left, gunfire had opened at Walter Manor.  
> There's a voice I've deliberately omitted up until now. I think it's time I passed over to The Spine's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning required for this chapter: graphic depictions of violence.
> 
> TLL   
> 28/04/2018

It was too fast.

Becile fired a single shot. There was a flash of horrible white light and a crash like thunder. The Spine hadn't adjusted to the light before something struck his hand hard, and pain radiated down his arm as his sensors screamed that something was wrong. Something red-hot splashed across his cheeks.

His calculations must have been off, and Becile must have shot his arm clean off. But hopefully it had been enough time for Squeaks to get to Becile and knock the gun out of her hand.

He looked up to where Squeaks was standing as the blinding light faded.

She wasn't there.

Molton steel was splattered over the walls. His hand had been torn away by liquid metal and hit the wall behind him, where it hissed as his fingers melted and black rubber boiled away in foul clouds, leaving silver streaks as it rolled down over the bricks.

It slowly occurred to him that Becile was screaming.

She had collapsed to the floor. Tiny metal splatters had hit her face and burrowed into her skin, the flesh no match for the heat, leaving smouldering freckles behind. But a fist-sized lump had knocked her to the ground and was burning relentlessly into her abdomen as she lay on her back. Her eyes were rolling back up into her head and she could do nothing but scream.

The Spine felt not pity or fear, steam furiously beginning to rise, and covered the distance to her in two long strides. He kicked her over onto her side, her screaming dwindled to a whimper as a pool of metal slithered from her stomach and lay sizzling and popping on the ground, burning an ugly pocmarked yellow. Becile grabbed wildly for the light gun she had dropped, but as her hand landed on the barrel The Spine put his foot down on top of it, sandwiching her hand between the gun and his foot.

Their eyes locked. Hers were fearful pinpricks.

_VOP,_ called a little voice in his head, which was always there scanning his thoughts. A voice which stopped the robots from ever harming the humans again. A voice which, after Vietnam, The Spine had insisted upon installing.

A voice which was infallible.

For the other robots.

_OVERRIDE,_ he responded, _SELF DEFENCE._

The Spine was a heavy robot. He shifted his weight onto his front foot, and the gun splintered into pieces. He turned down his sensors to cut out Becile’s shrieks.

“What happened?” he growled, horribly calm.

Becile had begun to draw shallow, panicking breaths. The smell of roasting meat reached The Spine’s olfactory detectors.

When she didn't answer, his lip twitched and he silently twisted his foot into the floor. She screamed again.

_VOP_

_OVERRIDE. INFORMATION REQUIRED._

“I shot her,” she cried. Her face had begun to lose color as blood drained away from the skin, “She hit - exploded -”

She pointed shakily at the gray hole in the air. It was undulating gently, and a green, misty sheen covered the surface.

“You've killed her,” he snarled.

She nodded, and her head fell back against the floor, exhausted with the effort of holding it up.

_VOP_

_OVERRIDE._

He shifted his weight onto his back foot.

_VOP_

_OVERRIDE._

He lifted his foot from her broken hand.

_VOP_

_OVERRIDE._

He placed it carefully over her face.

_VOP_

_OVERRIDE._

He shifted his weight forward again, and the screaming stopped, as did the incessant beeping in the back of his head.

The silence which remained resonated around the room. He looked over his shoulder at the thing that hung in the air, and calmly picked up Becile’s unmoving form by her collar, dragging it behind him. He lifted it in front of him, and leaned towards the grayness. The greenish mist dispersed as he pressed the body into the film, skin and bone turning instantly into gray dust and ash that descended into a growing pile on the floor underneath, and the air filled with smoke and the stench of charred flesh.

And then, the body was gone.

He walked slowly back to a small pool of blood on the floor, and kicked a puddle of cooling metal over it, where it hissed and bubbled briefly. Some of the metal clung to his boot and burned easily through the leather, and he hissed aloud as it began to fuse painfully to his foot.

A panic button was on the wall in the next room, and The Spine stepped outside to press it before returning to the little side room.

And then the dark mist seemed to clear from his head, and he permitted himself to collapse against the wall, his face screwed up in anguish, and he crumpled to the floor as sirens reverberated shrilly about the walls, now the only man in an empty room.

***

The elevator rang out, and footsteps pounded along the balcony, echoing through the chamber. They paused halfway, and Peter's voice soon followed.

“Anyone down here?”

“In here,” The Spine called back weakly. He hadn't moved, piled up in the corner of the room.

Peter followed his voice, and as he saw The Spine slumped on the floor he collapsed on his knees in front of him, fearfully looking him over for damage.

“Shit, Spine,” he muttered. The Spine checked his damage report. Right hand: removed. Right foot: abnormal mass, now fused to the floor. Minor splatters of metal, like blood across his face. He got off lightly, considering.

“Are you alright?” Peter asked.

The Spine shook his head. “I'm functional. Although metal’s fused my foot to the floor.” He tried and failed not to think about where the metal had come from.

“What the hell happened in here?”

The Spine didn't want to answer. He didn't want to admit this was real. And when he started talking, he would have to start lying. He hated lying.

“Squeaks is gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“Don't make me say it, Peter. Just look around you.”

Peter looked up, and managed a weak “oh…” under his breath as he took in the  metal splashed over every surface, cooling to a dull, oxidised gray. The mahogany desk was gently smouldering.

“She thought that thing was a portal,” The Spine continued, his voice flat and emotionless, staring at the floor, “she came down here trying to get to it. I followed her down and… damnit, Peter, a Becile got down here.”

Peter visibly tensed. “Which one?”

“Phyllisia Becile.”

“Phyllisia?” Peter remarked with surprise.

The Walters watched the Beciles as much as the Beciles watched them. They had to, for defense. Risk factors for every family member were in a file in the Manor.

They had considered Phyllisia ‘new blood’, and therefore low risk. She was a Becile by name, but had left home to join the army years ago, and had shown no interest in the family business of waging war on the unwilling Walters.

Maybe she never would have, if she hadn't stumbled on The Spine’s army record.

“I was trying to stop Squeaks touching that thing when she stepped in.”

“What did she want?”

_Here we go._

Spine shrugged.

“I don't know. She got a hold of Squeaks. They struggled and…” he nodded over to the light gun, “she tried to shoot that thing, but I think it must have misfired. They both hit the gray thing and just…” he shuddered,” exploded.”

“Filter.”

“What?”

“It's a blue matter filter,” Peter elaborated, tugging his hands through his hair. “Anything else that touches it just burns up.”

“Oh,” said Spine, more out of habit than interest.

Peter exhaled slowly.

“We're going to have to send a report about this to Becile Industries. They're still not supposed to break in. She didn't say why she was here?”

“She didn't get a chance,” The Spine lied, “It was all over pretty fast.”

She hadn't been a bad kid. Clever, too, and one of the first people to actually bother to find a legitimate reason to bring him down. The Spine hated lies and cover-up, but since he'd woken up in Vietnam, his hands covered in blood, he'd known. This secret was his, and his only. Because it implied he was a danger to human life, and Walter Robotics would never be permitted to continue. Everyone would be shut down if word ever got out. Rabbit, Zero, Hatchworth, The Jon, Upgrade, Squea-

It was the weight of the artificial lives of his brothers and sisters on his shoulders.

That never meant he wasn't sympathetic to Becile’s cause. If he'd found out that the Becile robots had done what he believed he had done, he would have gone after them too.

But then Becile went after Squeaks. Now, he would have to carry her death with him as well.

“Squeaks thought there was a portal down here? Why?” Peter asked after thinking for a moment.

“I don't know,” The Spine answered, truthfully, “she said something about Rachel.”

“Rachel died,” and Peter slumped still further as he counted up the casualties, “cycling accident. Squeaks took that hard.”

_Because she thought it was her fault_ , Spine thought. _She thought installing her eyes killed Rachel._ None of this would have happened if Squeaks hadn't got those green eyes. He almost told Peter, and then realised no one else knew what Squeaks had done. He added it to his list of secrets. Rachel's death could remain an accident.

“Squeaks,” he croaked, “you can't bring her back?”

It was a hollow hope. There was a pair of unfinished silver legs on the desk in front of him, now ruined by metal spray. She'd like to have those. But it would be the most extensive repair job Peter would have done. With no body, he would have to rebuild her entirely.

But, he thought to himself, this time there would be no time limit. He could make her slowly, carefully, without cutting corners. They could take care, and stop whatever caused those horrible shut-downs she kept having. Once her memories were downloaded to her new body, she could begin again.

But the green matter from her eyes had been flickering against the filter. The blue matter - the very heart of her - was nowhere to be seen.

Peter shook his head.

“I couldn't reclaim anything that made her who she is,” he explained, lowering himself to the floor with hunched shoulders. “When I upgraded her memory capacity she didn't want to be backed up to the cloud, so I don't have memories on file. And her core is wherever the filter comes out.”

“You don't know what's on the other side?”

“Not a clue. I can't get to it to find out.”

It hit The Spine like a ton of bricks. She was never coming back. He dropped his head to hide his face, which would give away far more than he wanted. But his chest heaved as he failed to hold back the tears.

“I'm sorry, Spine.”

“I know,” he muttered, “I could just use a few minutes.”

“Sure thing. I'll go get some tools to get you off the floor.” Peter stood and headed towards the door. He sniffed thickly. The mask made it difficult to tell when he cried.

“Peter?” The Spine called to him as he reached the door, and he stopped, looking back at him.

Squeaks had talked to him about disconnection before. She was the one who had had the idea of releasing her core, when the worst happened. He never thought it would happen so soon.

“I want an upgrade to be built in. If we wind down… If we die,” he corrected himself bitterly, “our cores need to be opened. Can you rig something up to do that automatically? For everyone?”

Peter didn't move, but rapped his fingers against the doorframe half-heartedly as he cleared his throat.

“That'll take a lot of work, Spine. Are you sure?”

“Please.”

Peter nodded, but paused a minute longer.

“I'm sorry, Spine. I know you liked her.”

He tipped his head wordlessly, and Peter walked away.

The Spine lay against the wall, and waited quietly, letting the oil drip down his chin and onto the floor.

He could only hope, to keep himself sane, that Squeaks had been right. Somewhere, wherever she had come out, she was just blue matter now. With her core destroyed, he hoped she was free to forget.

*****


	28. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is more to be said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might find it useful to read the prologue of the story! Puts this in a little perspective.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/7523005/chapters/21409466
> 
> TLL  
> 28/04/2018

_ “What if - when this all goes down - we just need to be released? What if we only escape when our core is destroyed?” _

_ -Squeaks  _

Physicists have theorised that in our universe, there are many different dimensions, the first four of which are space and time. Humans are very good at moving in all the space directions, but usually only good at moving forward in time. Lots of other people have theorised that our universe is not the only one, that other planes of reality exist in the same space as ours, like pieces of paper lying close to one another in a book. 

Peter Walter VI didn’t believe in doors in the Manor, perhaps because they were only doors in space, which were a little dull. Doorways between worlds could be made just about anywhere, so long as you blew up a hole in the right dimension.

Rabbit had once carefully exploded, and created a door in a somewhat unexpected dimension. 

One side of the door stood in a little room in the corner of the Manor. 

The other side of the door was small and black, and hung a few miles above the Earth in 1962, looking very much like a small, dense little sphere of nothingness, delicately balanced on a ledge between two universes, which for the sake of argument could be called, say, Alpha and Prime. 

The little dense nothing caught the attention of scientists, who sent up a station and came awfully close. They studied the Nothing intensely. 

One day, a core of blue matter was fired at the doorway in the Manor at something approaching light-speed, albeit there was a reluctant robot attached to it at the time. 

One day, the gateway in space burst open, as a blue laser li ght exploded out of it, along the thin line between two universes. 

_ No!  _

The blue beam of light stretched out from its gateway, and headed for the space station. 

_ No, wait!  _

If the scientists could hear light, they would’ve heard the beam crying as it raced towards them. 

_ Where am I?  _

They would’ve felt the panic in its voice.

_ What… What is ‘I’?  _

The beam smashed into a space station, and didn’t, at the same time, as it split itself between two universes which existed so close to one another, and were just so slightly different. 

_ Scared! Scared!  _

In one universe, the beam found a human who felt familiar. It clung on. In another, it pulsed on through, deep into space. 

Nothing happened. For a very long time, nothing happened, for the part of the beam that knew it was still moving, except that it felt itself stretching further and further from the part of itself in another universe, which was holding tighter and tighter onto the thing it had hit. 

_ This, _ thought the beam, clinging onto its human.  _ Peter? _

_ No _ , thought the beam, tearing through time and space. 

_ Maybe? _ The beam desperately clutched at the man’s heart. 

_ Maybe. _ The beam raced on. 

Being so far from itself hurt. And with nothing to hold on to, it slowly forgot everything. Except… Peter. It held on to the thought, racing through space, waiting to stop.  _ Peter _ . 

The beam shattered a Russian space probe. It burned through the rubble, felt something... so small. So frail. Familiar. The beam touched it. It felt like... instructions. For how to live. To exist. 

_ Heart _ , said the beam which destroyed the space station, pressing itself fondly into the heart of Peter IV. 

_ Yes..., _  said the beam which destroyed the probe,  _ heart _ . The blue matter moulded itself into the form of a heart.  _ Why? _

There was a long pause, like someone listening carefully.  _ It beats. _

_ Yes! _ The heart began to ripple.  _ And lungs! _

_ Yes! Lungs!  _

A child formed in space, as the beam talked to itself across the gap between universes, reading DNA, observing the man it occupied, remembering living. The child formed bones of light, eyes of gravity, organs and sinews from the limitless sea of passing neutrinos, and tried to remember what it was all for. It remembered lips, and laughed joyously with them. It rolled its shoulders, and carefully twisted and teased outwards, lengthening out limbs, flexing new fingers and toes. 

She paused to look down and wiggle her toes. 

_ Legs! We have legs! _

The child was delighted, and giggled. She really liked having legs.

_ Skin _ , thought the beam, stretching into the body of the man, giving him power. 

The woman blinked.  _ Why? _

_ To protect.  _

The woman, born of space, looked down at her hands, puzzled. Impenetrable purple light glowed back at her. 

_ Against what?  _

_ Don’t know.  _

She shrugged. It didn't seem important. But a star rolled by, and she took the boiling white light as her hair, flowing all about her. 

She existed, and so looked around her. All about was luxurious blackness, with a million, million specks of light she did not understand, all colours of the rainbow. And that rainbow was beautiful, for now she could see the whole spectrum of light, and X-rays danced between the stars in front of her. It was the universe, and it was hers to explore. 

Her blue heart glowed. _ Where are you? _

_ Here.  _

The Daughter of Space felt the pull; that way. Back to Earth. 

_ I’m coming.  _

She headed back, for Peter. 

FIN 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And… that’s it! Aaaah I'm shaking. I can't believe it's done! This all started on a journey home from work, idly musing about lore, when I wondered about this blue matter beam in Vice Quadrant. Where did it come from? Did the gate open just the once? Why did the blue matter try so hard to make itself into people? Why would something we know as a Walter Robotics energy source be streaming out of a space-gate? So I decided to make the LONGEST WEIRDEST ORIGIN STORY I Could. 
> 
> That’s the whole story! Well, not quite. I cannot tell a lie, I began to fold the whole lore to my little AU, and there were so many aspects of this story that I really wanted to explore, but I’m afraid I have neither the time nor the talent to bring them to fruition. If this has taught me anything it’s that writing, for example, a convincing romantic relationship is really hard. I really hope you like the story as it stands; below are the threads I dropped along the way, in case anyone likes them and would like to pad them out further in their own works:
> 
> · Squeaks told Becile that green matter is synonymous with pain symptoms. BI didn’t know this; going all the way back to humans becoming merged with their copper elephants, I reckoned pain rendered the humans speechless. The Becile robots built since wouldn’t possibly know any different than to bare through the pain they live in.  
> · There is the longer story of what makes us human and what doesn’t. If Squeaks story implies that a human’s memories could be uploaded, then if someone did that voluntarily before their death, would it be the same person? (probably not. But I like the theory)  
> · I really tried to bring Phyllisia away from being the bad guy and The Spine toward being much less the hero. I wanted Phyllsia’s reasons to be real and terrified. Did Spine actually kill people with his bare hands? Was he made to do it? I didn’t want it to be obvious as to what actually happened in the compound, and whose fault it actually is. Was Phyllisia’s reasoning unfounded? I won’t tell you ;)  
> · I wanted to write more about the BI/WR relationships in the real world. I picture BI robots as well made, but incomplete AI. WR robots have AI down to such a fine art, the robots are human enough to be fallable. Authors have been writing about automation taking over our jobs for years, and this isn’t going to go away – I loved the idea that BI robots would be efficient, but widely disliked by those whose jobs they take. Meanwhile a Walter robot joins the team in your office and… well it’s just Fred, isn’t it? He’s just one of the guys. Always spills his coffee. Thus BI looks into other, wider technologies while WR continues with their kooky creations.
> 
>  
> 
> One more thing, before I go. If you’ve made it this far, I’m going to assume you’ve got a lot of patience and love for SPG fanfic. I don’t know about you, but I find Ao3 a little tricky to search through, especially for older works that move back a little. I’m very happy for this to have its space and gently gather dust on the bookshelf of the internet, but I have an idea. If you write a work, why don’t you put a list on the end of some works you’ve enjoyed, and think the reader might enjoy?
> 
> Well, I’m going to, anyway.  
> 
> · Green Heart (archiveofourown.org/works/13576326/chapters/31159965): the ongoing story of a young lady newbot with a green heart who is taken into the loving Walter household. And I believe she’s got a soft spot for The Spine…  
> · Artificial Life and Other Unnatural Things (archiveofourown.org/works/7935397/chapters/18138007): the story of Peter Walter I and Iris Tona, and how their children came to be, with a twist. Also, a masterclass on characters falling in love. Features baby robots.  
> · When Irish Eyes are Smiling (archiveofourown.org/series/73846): The other wonderful version of Peter & Iris. A series of short works that slip together really rather beautifully. Features baby robots: See When We Were New, also by InterNutter  
> · Life with Marie (]archiveofourown.org/works/895003/chapters/1728202): An ongoing work, part of a series, which is slowly but surely covering the entire lifetime, it would seem, of the robots. Includes multiple features of The Spine’s romantic life with humans.  
> · Seven point eight (archiveofourown.org/works/640138/chapters/1160438): a gem, never completed. The band, circa 2012-ish, get into a dire situation while away from home.


End file.
